


Rookery Downs

by moonlighten, Nekoian



Series: Rookery Downs [4]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-02
Updated: 2013-02-02
Packaged: 2017-11-27 23:50:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 27,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/667887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonlighten/pseuds/moonlighten, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nekoian/pseuds/Nekoian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>The universe this fic is set in features human versions of two sets of UK brothers and Irelands.</p>
<p>Nekoian's:</p>
<p>Niall - Ireland<br/>Angus - Scotland<br/>Richard - England<br/>Llewellyn - Wales<br/>Oliver - Northern Ireland</p>
<p>And Moonlighten's:</p>
<p>Alasdair - Scotland<br/>Caitlin - Ireland<br/>Dylan - Wales<br/>Arthur - England<br/>Michael - Northern Ireland</p>
<p>Pairings subject to change as the story progresses.</p>
    </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The universe this fic is set in features human versions of two sets of UK brothers and Irelands.
> 
> Nekoian's:
> 
> Niall - Ireland  
> Angus - Scotland  
> Richard - England  
> Llewellyn - Wales  
> Oliver - Northern Ireland
> 
> And Moonlighten's:
> 
> Alasdair - Scotland  
> Caitlin - Ireland  
> Dylan - Wales  
> Arthur - England  
> Michael - Northern Ireland
> 
> Pairings subject to change as the story progresses.

Llewellyn’s breath is still heaving when he throws open the door to the small office. It seemed bigger when he first met with the school's headmaster a few months ago to discuss his terms of employment – being that the term hadn’t started at that point and the teacher he was replacing hadn’t been happy with her retirement.  
  
Llewellyn is greeted by a desk full of bewildered looking people, ranging from young men and women, to older and more battle-hardened sorts. One chair remains empty, and he supposes it must be his. He steps forward to claim with a cheerful sounding: “I’m so sorry I’m late. The bus… It left early and I had to run.”  
  
The man in charge – a rather imposing looking man with slicked back blonde hair and eyes so blue as to look almost grey – only offers him a confused looking cock of his brow and a slow lowering of notes.  
  
“I’m sorry, are you--” He cuts himself off, studying the chair Llewellyn was about to sit in, and allowing his sight to drift around the circle.  
  
They all look surprised to see Llewellyn, to the point where he believes he might have walked into the wrong school completely.  
  
“I’m Llewellyn Walsh.” He pauses, as his face and name do nothing to cure the look of confusion on the face of the man named Ludwig Beilschmidt who had terrified Llewellyn when they’d first met and hasn’t improved upon his first impression at all. “I’m the new music teacher. You sent me a letter a few weeks ago about starting today.”  
  
The idea that the school even has a music department appears to be news to Mr Beilschmidt, who makes a point to slowly pop open his briefcase and rummage around in search of some evidence of the story being true, or perhaps a phone with which to call the police and get him evicted. He slides a pair of reading glasses onto his face and gets to work reading; the process is almost excruciatingly slow, especially since Llewellyn can’t quite find the courage to sit down.  
  
He allows himself a double-check of the people around him, eyes settling on a particularly handsome – but completely ill-tempered – looking man wearing what looks like an expensive Italian tie and a Rolex, whose expression darkens the second he notices the staring. Llewellyn looks away, studying the brown carpet. It feels wiry and rough even while he wears his shoes. The whole room has a funk of stale tobacco in it, likely infused there, considering smoking indoors is now banned.  
  
“Ah yes, Mrs Terwilliger retired. I’d completely forgotten.”  
  
“I’m sorry; perhaps I should have called to remind you.” Llewellyn sinks into his seat and immediately casts his eyes to the beaten up wood of the table, resting his arms there and curling his fingers neatly together. “It’s very nice to meet you all. I hope I --”  
  
“I thought the music department was closing down.” The ill-tempered man says, loudly and rather peevishly. “You never said we were replacing Terwilliger. I thought that the room was opening up if we needed it.”  
  
Llewellyn shrinks down in his seat, remembering how he’d fallen in love with the room when he’d first seen it, despite it being a little cold. It was flanked by wide glass windows and a small hall connecting it to the backstage of the small auditorium with several small rooms for storage and office work littered along its length.  
  
“I thought it was a shame to lose the music department.” One helpful voice chimes in. “Mrs Terwilliger always said--”  
  
“We do have other matters to attend to.” Mr Beilschmidt says sternly. “And that room would have gone to the Drama and English departments even if Music had closed down.”  
  
Llewellyn feels his teeth clamp around his lower lip, somehow he’d expected a much warmer welcome.  
  
“You’ve all been assigned form classes, I hope. I don’t want another mix up like last year.”  
  
“That was Kirkland’s fault,” the ill-tempered man says, quickly and perfectly timed to cause a ripple of mixed irritation and agreement. Everyone seems to have taken sides, though Llewellyn can’t imagine why.  
  
“Does this mean I don’t have to sign in two classes every morning instead of one?” a young looking lad in a T-shirt and track bottoms asks. He looks like he might just be in charge of physical education, right down to the unkempt blond hair and determined blue eyes. “I mean I know Room 6 is big but it’ll take forever and I have equipment to set up.”  
  
“Mr Walsh will take one of the first year classes off you. Decide between yourselves.”  
  
The feeling strikes Llewellyn that the PE teacher seems like the sort to make up his mind for himself and forget about other people. Not that he minds too much.

 

* * *

  
  
  
Richard doesn’t lift his head from his work even when Llewellyn clears his throat, as the early morning is dedicated to the planting of geraniums and getting window boxes put on the sills of the tavern, supposedly to disguise the fact that the windows are in need of replacing.  
  
Llewellyn returns to his work, the infinite cycle of writing up music sheets and deciding how best to teach disinterested fourteen year olds about the different sorts of notes and how to shape them on the paper.  
  
“You should have taken the job down in Surrey,” Richard chimes again, looking up swiftly from his task to frown and shake his head.  
  
“I don’t want to leave, besides, I like that little private school,” Llewellyn says. “State schools are a bit scary.”  
  
He instantly has flashbacks to his own experience of high school, which amounts to years of huddling in a corner clutching his books tight. Sometimes the monotony of that was broken up by the surly big blond bloke from the higher classes calling him a faggot and stealing his lunch money.  
  
“You’re a fucking adult.” Richard lifts the wooden container and dumps it back onto the sill, where it blocks a sizable amount of the light that could actually illuminate the pub. “And you might have gotten a promotion if you’d gone to Surrey. You’d have been head of the department within a few years. With the right courses you could be teaching in a university.”  
  
“I’m perfectly happy here. I can help you out at weekends and watch Oliver when it’s required of me.”  
  
Said teenager glances up from his homework where it’s laid out on the table, his school uniform somewhere in the process of being removed – his blazer thrown carelessly over the back of his white plastic seat and his tie yanked loose. He chooses to roll his eyes and mutter something about being more than old enough to take care of himself.  
  
“You had the chance to make something of yourself,” Richard carries on, his stern voice impeded by the effort of dragging another of his window boxes back towards the large white building. “And you threw it away, not that I’m surprised you understand. You always set your sights far too low, Mother always said so.”  
  
“And you had dreams of moving to Cornwall and getting a foot in on the bed and breakfast, then starting a hotel, but you’re still here.”  
  
“Cornwall is a horrid place.” Richard grabs hold of the white towel he’d set out and wanders closer. “Far too hot and much too expensive.”  
  
“But you could have moved onto bigger and better things, yet you stayed here to run this dump.”  
  
An offended look spills across Richard’s features and he pauses to tap the door to his beloved tavern. “The Turnpike is a splendid building, and it belonged to Uncle Henry, god rest his soul.”  
  
Llewellyn isn’t sure he wants to carry on with his analysis on how hypocritical it is that Richard badger him constantly about his inability to leave when he’s been talking about bigger better things since he first took over the pub’s running when he was twenty, after years working inside it under their uncle, who in turn also worked for his uncle and inherited it when the man eventually died.  
  
“And when I’m good and ready Oli can take over after, can’t you?” Richard smiles fondly at the red-haired youth, who peers up at him with a hopeful glint in his eye, one that’s a little worrying.  
  
“Really?” Oliver sets his pen down and bites his lower lip. “You’d let me run this place?”  
  
“It’s a family tradition. But you’ll have to –”  
  
“Throw all your hopes and dreams aside.” Llewellyn cuts him off. “You’d be better off getting a decent job.”  
  
Oliver looks indecisive and shrugs. “Angus says I won’t amount to anything anyway.”  
  
“You won’t if you don’t finish your homework.” Llewellyn smiles towards his little brother before turning his face towards Richard and scowling at him. “At any rate, I’d like you to stop gong on and on about my life when you’ve not done very much with your own.”  
  
“It’s a family business, a tradition, it’s not the same thing.” Richard speeds up the cleaning of his hands, soiling the white towel with streaks of dirt.  
  
“Regardless, I’m starting my new job tomorrow, the same as you’ll be opening this place.” Llewellyn scoots across and allows Richard to sit down beside him, and he immediately lifts Oliver’s maths homework and scrutinises it. “It’s not up for discussion.”  
  
“You’ve done all these wrong.” Richard holds the workbook up and waves it accusingly. “You’ll never amount to anything if you can’t do basic long division.”  
  
Llewellyn frowns at his brother and Oliver shrinks slightly under the scrutiny, his cheeks starting to burn as shame takes it’s usual little wander over his chubby features.  
  
“That’s right, Oli,” Llewellyn says, “You wouldn’t want to end up like Richard, now would you?”  
  
Richard closes the book and immediately smacks Llewellyn on the shoulder with it. “You cheeky bastard.”  
  


* * *

  
  
By happy coincidence, Dylan gets out of his car on his second day back at work at just the right moment to walk into the school with Lovino.  
  
At least, that’s what he tells Lovino as he falls into step beside him. Lovino gives him a long and distinctly unimpressed sidelong look in lieu of taking picking up this small conversational bait Dylan has cast his way, and Dylan’s face flushes with heat, wondering if the other man has seen through his tissue-thin attempt at subterfuge. Perhaps it was the exaggerated gasp of surprise he’d feigned when he’d turned away from his car to find Lovino behind him that had given him away, or the equally forced breathless laughter afterwards. Even more embarrassingly, perhaps he had been spotted scrambling back inside his little Clio when he saw Lovino’s Fiat 500 pull into the car park, or else when he began his absurd pantomime of rifling through the detritus in his glove box in search the cigarette lighter he already knew was in his jacket pocket.  
  
Dylan takes a deep breath and holds it tight in his chest for a couple of strides to keep himself from blurting out some ridiculous, ill-conceived justification for his actions as that would doubtless just draw even more unwelcome attention to them. More than likely, Lovino hadn’t even noticed anything unusual in the first place, because it’s doubtful that he pays enough attention to Dylan to have any concept of he might ordinarily act, anyway.  
  
When he finally allows his lungs to empty, the urge to defend himself has passed, and Dylan feels more equal to the task of attempting to make small talk. Small talk, he thinks, is only to be expected upon running into a colleague after the long hiatus of the summer holidays, and thus a small step towards normal and, most importantly, one that leads away from the sort of dubious behaviour exemplified by manufacturing ‘accidental’ meetings with them, and any thoughts that might be lingering thereon.  
  
“Went by fast, didn’t they?” he says with false brightness. “The holidays, I mean.”  
  
Dylan’s break from work hadn’t ended up being much of one at all. Despite having ostensibly moved out of the family money pit, he found himself spending more time there than his own home due to Alasdair’s unparalleled skill at guilt-tripping. Somehow, he always managed to persuade Dylan that every bit of DIY that needed doing there – no matter how small – was a matter of life and death; that if it was neglected, they’d have blood on their hands as Michael would surely keel over and die from the lack of it. So whenever his days weren’t taken up with planning lessons for the upcoming year at school, they were filled with wallpapering, tiling and plumbing at the Kirkland ancestral home, whilst his own house still has no carpets and two leaky sinks even though he’s lived there for over a year.  
  
Lovino’s top lip curls slightly, either disgusted by the triteness of Dylan’s statement or else his sneer is meant to pay mute testament to his disappointment with his own holiday.  
  
Choosing to believe it’s the latter, if only to spare himself from sinking further into shame, Dylan presses on, “Did you and your brother end up going to Italy to see your granddad?”  
  
The glance Lovino shoots him appears distinctly puzzled, as though the possibility that he might have a granddad, in Italy or otherwise, is one that’s never occurred to him before. Or, as seems infinitely more likely, he has absolutely no idea how Dylan might have got wind of his projected travel plans.  
  
“You mentioned you might,” Dylan quickly elaborates, eager to reassure that he isn’t creepily over-invested enough in Lovino’s comings and goings to be keeping track of his whereabouts over the summer by any sort of nefarious means, just creepily over-invested enough to have remembered near every word the other man has ever said in his earshot. “Near the end of last term? At Alfred’s birthday party?”  
  
Lovino doesn’t look as though he remembers saying anything of the sort, nor does he look particularly reassured. In fact, judging by the way his eyebrows scrunch down low and nostrils pinch tight, he’s probably imagining all the nefariousness Dylan was hoping to avoid implying.  
  
“Right,” Lovino says eventually, his tone flat and uninterested. “Yeah.”  
  
No more elaboration is forthcoming, and Dylan is left to wonder whether Lovino’s confirming that he’s finally remembered their discussion at the party, or that the visit to his grandfather had indeed taken place. Dylan decides to opt out of questioning him further, however, as the entire subject seems poisoned somehow; too fraught with potential pitfalls for all that it should be one of the least controversial of all possible conversation topics.  
  
The rest of their slow trudge towards the main school building is conducted in silence. Dylan keeps his eyes fixed firmly on his shoes and the few autumn crisped leaves slowly drifting across the tarmac underfoot so he doesn’t have to watch the frantic scanning of his surroundings that he’s sure Lovino is involved in, desperately searching for better company.  
  
Lovino finally speaks up again when they reach the wide stone steps leading up to the school’s front door, albeit only to ask if he can borrow a cigarette before they go inside. Dylan hands him one wordlessly – he thinks that his usual rejoinder when faced with the same request from his brothers that they should just ask if they can ‘nick one instead because they’re hardly going to give the same one back, so borrow is semantically inaccurate’ will go down like a lead balloon, and thus keeps it to himself – and then watches him light it out of the corner of his eye.  
  
Lovino Vargas has, Dylan had concluded after months of careful study, absolutely beautiful hands. He’d never really thought of hands in terms of their aesthetics before, only their practical skill, but there was something about the combination of those long, slim artist’s fingers, well-manicured nails, and tanned skin that had caught his attention on the very first day they met and exchanged a loose, quickly-dropped handshake, and the appreciation had simply deepened over the year that followed. He’s even written poetry inspired by them on occasion, though it has all ended up being very quickly destroyed after rereading and the subsequent realisation that what had at the time seemed like philosophical meditations on attraction were actually elegies chronicling his descent into sexual frustration.  
  
It’s been eighteen months since Cerys dumped him, almost ten since he got over her as best as he thinks he’s ever going to, and a good six since he started the slow slide into his current state of despair, believing that he is going to be alone for the rest of his life.  
  
If he wasn’t at such a low relational ebb, he’s sure he would never have noticed Lovino’s hands, or how handsome his profile is (something which often transfixes him so completely during staff meetings that he has to go and beg for a recap from Alfred or Feliciano afterwards because he hasn’t been able to take in a single word), or even the fact that all his trousers are invariably so tight that they look almost painted on (something that causes Dylan to loiter around corners so that he can be sure of following Lovino up stairs rather than preceding him), because everything else about him is awful.  
  
He is – as Alasdair had announced within minutes of being introduced to him at Alfred’s party – a complete wanker, but, unfortunately, Dylan’s libido seems more than content to overlook his abrasiveness and petulance, his seeming dislike of everything Dylan – and most other people, besides – does or says, and, most importantly, his apparently staunch heterosexuality, if his flirting patterns are anything to go by. (Adult and female seem to be his only criteria; even Mrs Terwilliger hadn’t escaped his winks and effusive compliments, though she had been more bemused than flattered by his attentions.)  
  
Dylan thinks he really needs to make the effort to meet some new people this year – broaden his social circle – because he’s pretty much convinced it’s nothing but desperation at work.  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
His new room needs to be aired, and he has various files and forms to fill in. A number of the schools instruments, now out of storage, need a good hard clean and tidy, the piano needs retuned and several of the violins need fresh strings.  
  
Llewellyn still manages to run late however, dashing like a school boy down the corridors, a stack of files and folders under one arm and his favourite violin case firmly in hand. He darts past the greetings of his co workers -being late always leaves in in a terrible cloud of panic that renders him impolite- before swiftly barging into his door instead of through it.  
  
His files scatter in several directions, but his violin case remains unmolested. The loss of his cargo does allow him to rummage through his bag for his keys, it’s an old leather thing that he used at school and never saw fit to part with. It seems fitting somehow, even if its use had been purely out of desperation. He’d not thought of what to carry things in before and he’d been unable to spare the time required to wander into town.  
  
Somehow he keeps finding tasks to complete: worksheets to type up or a memorising the syllabus.  
  
The folders are rounded up, and he notes how several of his co-workers study him, apparently having forgotten who he is in the short space of time since they saw him last. Not that he minds too much, he isn’t sure he made much of an impression, and they’re likely busy anyway.  
  
He settles at his desk and immediately flips open his syllabus, as well as the complicated page of tick boxes he needs to hand in to the headmaster by the end of the day. A routine check that he’s not cutting corners or slipping in anything he shouldn’t.  
  
“Hey,” The voice is confident and bright, and its owner sees fit to stride into the room, trainers squeaking on the floor: the PE teacher currently without a name as Llewellyn hadn’t thought to ask anyone before dashing home yesterday. “You’re the new music teacher, right?”  
  
Llewellyn lowers his pen and studies the room around him, making sure it is actually his music room he’s inhabiting.  
  
The old poster of orchestra arrangement that’s peeling from the back notice board confirms it.  
  
“Yes, that’s me.” He tries to smile, but his attention still finds itself hooked into the syllabus, a thing he'd never thought much of as a student and finds even worse now that he has to implement it. “And you’re --”  
  
“Alfred Jones.” His grin broadens. “I came to give you your form class assignment.”  
  
Which is not how the conversation had gone yesterday; he’d been promised a discussion on the matter. Still, Alfred slides the paper in his direction: Class A18.  
  
“All you have to do is mark them in every morning and tell them what’s what,” Alfred reassures, nodding to himself.  
  
“Class A18 is…?”  
  
“First years. Dylan mentioned that since you were new here you may as well take the new kids. Made sense to me.” Alfred leans back on the balls of his feet and surveys the music room. He appears not to have ever been in it before considering how he examines all around him, like a small child. “This room is way bigger than I remember it.”  
  
“I assume it’s due to a lack of desks.” Llewellyn eyes the expanse of empty floor, nothing but a supply of chairs huddled in one corner under a musty tarp. It seems like the chairs always end up in the music room during long closures.  
  
The location of the tables, however, is a mystery.  
  
“So do you know where all the other classrooms are?” Alfred looks unconcerned about it, his attention falling to one of the old posters on the wall, one explaining the very basics of sheet music. He seems to disapprove of it, judging by the tiny wrinkle in his slightly off centre nose. “They don’t tell you when you just start, but you end up wandering all over the place to cover for other people.”  
  
“I didn’t know th–”  
  
“But you’re just across the hall from my office, if you follow the lockers you’ll find it. In the opposite direction is the girls PE area. It’s pink.” Alfred adjusts the sit of his glasses, squinting through them as if to check for dirt. “Generally nobody bothers with the music room, though, because it’s full of music junk and no other teacher wants to manoeuvre around it. It’s why I leave mats and ball bins in the little cranny next to the assembly hall.”  
  
“That’s normally where they store the sports equipment. In every school.”  
  
“Do you want to go look around?” Alfred jabs his thumb towards the door. “I can show you where the rest of the art rooms are.”  
  
This act of kindness seems only to be born from Alfred’s boredom. He turns on his heel and strides out the door.  
  
Llewellyn is still swept up in how offended he is about his music equipment being regarded as ‘junk’ and considers not bothering. His desperation to know where his fellow teachers are is the only thing that convinces him otherwise. He quickly grabs up his satchel and scuttles after, making a point to adjust his tie and wipe the dust off his brown jumper as best he can.  
  
“So you’re the head of the Physical Education department?” Llewellyn asks, hoping to slow the taller man’s stride a touch, and he does pause to take the question in, beaming proudly and stuffing his hands into his pockets.  
  
“That’s right. I took over when the older guy retired last year.” The news comes as a surprise, as Llewellyn hardly remembers any of his teachers retiring at all while he was in school, merely the comings and goings of younger teachers and classroom assistants.  
  
“And music is part of the art department?”  
  
“Yup, though you’re the only music teacher we have. I guess that makes you the head of department.” Alfred’s laugh is loud and a little obnoxious, but the news is startling, though not to be relished. Being in charge simply by merit of being the only person available is akin to proclaiming yourself head of a country that technically doesn’t exist.  
  
“So who’s the head of the art department? I was never introduced.”  
  
Alfred veers off down a previously unseen hallway, which is flanked by a half dozen doors on each side. It appears to be a mass of geography, science, history and religious education, with room for a small staircase at the end which Alfred proceeds to wander up.  
  
“Depends, Feliciano tends to be in charge, but he sort of sucks at it. Not that the art department ever really came together anyway.” Alfred shrugs as he heads up another floor and down a second main corridor. “They all get distracted and do their own thing.”  
  
“Good to know.”  
  
The rooms on this floor seem to house the English, drama and computer studies rooms, with three exceptionally large rooms on the opposite side that appears to be the cookery and home Economics department.  
  
“Lovino is the one in charge of those rooms.” Alfred says, hand sweeping towards the home Ec rooms, which have a strange, almost sinister aura about them. “And Dylan is sort of in charge of English. The computer rooms belong to the tech guys, so we leave them alone.”  
  
“I think it’s nice that the English department gets to stay where it is, I always enjoy the smell of your cooking,” says the happier looking of the two men wandering down the corridor towards them.  
  
The grumpy one is the handsome man Llewellyn remembers from yesterday. He shrugs the compliment off and tuts.  
  
“I like it better when those rooms were for the --” He stops dead upon seeing Alfred, and chooses to double his scowl. “What are you doing here, Jones? No hurdles for you to jump over here.”  
  
“I’m just showing the new music teacher the lay of the land.” Alfred cocks his head in Llewellyn’s direction, and then proceeds to look stumped. “Sorry, I forgot your name.”  
  
“Llewellyn Walsh,” Llewellyn replies, gripping the handle of his bag a little tighter and shuffling forward to join their circle, yet not quite able to complete it. “I was just hoping to find the other members of –”  
  
“Do we even need a music department?” Lovino asks, stuffing his nose into the air.  
  
“Music is part of the curriculum, as well as an important part of the art department.” The unnamed man with the pleasant face responds quickly. “Just like how the Home Ec department helps the physical education department teach the youngsters about healthy eating and –”  
  
“But we barely have students who actually go on to be musicians. The funding is wasted.”  
  
“We don’t have a huge number of famous chefs, athletes or poets leaving our doors, but they keep us around.” Pleasant man nods, trying to sound reasonable, it seems. “Though I can understand your irritation at not being able to use the room, I’m sure…” Pleasant-faced man turns his attention fully on Llewellyn, studying his posture – hunched and nervous – and face – hidden behind his hair – before carrying on. “I’m sorry; I’ve forgotten your name already.”  
  
“Llewellyn.” he responds, watching the ‘oh’ form on the man’s lips silently.  
  
“That’s an uncommon name. Very fitting for a music teacher, don’t you think so, Lovino?”  
  
Lovino makes a loud sound of disapproval before wandering unannounced into the nearest of his three home ec rooms.  
  
“He really is very sweet once you get to know him.”  
  
Llewellyn nods, if only because Lovino’s exceedingly handsome face has a certain appeal.  
  
“So, this is Dylan Kirkland. He’s one of the English teachers,” Alfred says, as if the English teacher is the single least interesting thing in the corridor.  
  
“I specialise in creative writing and poetry,” the man says, and then sticks his hand out. Llewellyn takes it, shaking instinctively. “It’s nice to have another member of the arts in the building. Music, literature and the visual arts, part of the art department triad. Mrs Terwilliger always said so.” Dylan forms a triangle with his fingers.  
  
“So are you still coming out after work?” Alfred asks Dylan casually. “A bunch of us were going to enjoy our last few days of freedom.” It appears to be the only reason Alfred thought to drag Llewellyn along on this little tour of the school.  
  
“I don’t see the harm. It’s either that or spend it at home. Aly has been rather… demanding lately.”  
  
Alfred’s eyebrows rise in interest, yet only slightly. “How come?”  
  
“Well you know what he’s like, once he finds a job to do he just has to see it through.”  
  
“That does sound like him.” Alfred smirks and rolls his shoulders, as if they’ve suddenly grown stiff from standing still too long. “Anyway, a meal and a drink tonight, let us know if you’re interested. I need to go finish what I was doing. Talk to you later.”  
  
Then the taller man turns and strides away, and Llewellyn stares after him, mouth falling open as a call for him to stop fails to come out.  
  
  


* * *

  
  
Back when he first finished his teacher training, Dylan had his eye on a position at a failing state school in Newcastle. He’d done his research on it, read its Ofsted report (a little frightening, to be honest), and become infused with a sense of purpose, imagining that he might, with his passion and enthusiasm for the subject, somehow imbue all of his hypothetical pupils with some measure of his own deep, abiding love for great literature and poetry, and thus single-handedly reverse the steady downward trend of their English GCSE results.  
  
Admittedly, it was a dream inspired largely by feel-good films about American teachers who were more than likely largely, or even entirely, fictional – no matter that they might purport to be ‘based on a true story’ – and Alasdair had been quick to point that out when Dylan first tentatively revealed his plans to him. He’d been just as eager to share that he thought Dylan would get ‘eaten alive’ seeing as though he was a ‘posh, dumpy short-arse’.  
  
Dylan had tried to push his brother’s words out of his mind, but it proved a little difficult as Alasdair seemed determined to repeat them as often as he could – they were dropped into unrelated conversations with such regularity that Dylan became convinced that Alasdair had a schedule drawn up towards the end – and eventually, over the course of a month or so, Dylan’s dream eroded away along with his confidence that he could ever have the skills necessary to realise it.  
  
Luckily, Alasdair had been on hand to let him know about an opening for an English and Drama teacher at a school that was a ‘bit more his speed’, due it being, apparently, almost as posh as Dylan himself. Dylan hadn’t even bothered looking for positions at private schools, and only in part because he’d fancied himself some sort of social crusader. Mainly, he’d thought they’d all want someone with a bit more experience, a proven track record rather than the ink barely being dry on their PGCE, but Alasdair had reassured him that the headmaster at this particular school was a forward thinking individual who actually preferred to work with young teachers, who he believed would bring fresh ideas to the table. Even more importantly, the head of the school’s board of directors was an old family friend; one who had, years ago, been angling for the title of Dad Number Four, and was still half in love with their mum’s memory.  
  
Dylan isn’t sure whether it was his fresh ideas or cronyism in action that got him his job at Rookery Downs School, but was at first grateful to his brother all the same for bringing the opportunity to his attention. The gratitude was short-lived, however, as it soon became clear that Alasdair’s preference for this school over the one in Newcastle had nothing to do with Dylan’s career prospects, or even his physical safety and mental health, and everything to do with the fact that it is within easy driving distance of the Kirkland estate.  
  
Consequently, he ignores his mobile the first time it rings, knowing without looking that it will simply be Alasdair, wanting to impose on his meagre weekday free time to deal with some disaster or other that, more often than not, could easily wait until the weekend. He is the only person of Dylan’s acquaintance who ever calls him during work, and that’s solely because he can’t seem to grasp that ‘lunch hour’ is something of a misnomer for a teacher, and thus he can’t make the fifty minute round trip chez Kirkland to help shift a bag of concrete or some such before his afternoon lessons begin, and, no, the evening’s no better because there’s marking and planning to be done (not stuffing his face and watching telly, thank you, Alasdair).  
  
He would have been happy to ignore it the second time it rings, too, but Feliciano pauses in his animated recounting of his and Lovino’s time in Italy (the senior Vargas had apparently had a wonderful time, despite his sullen silence on the subject), and his energetic gesticulation towards Dylan’s trouser pocket makes it clear that he thinks Dylan should answer. It seems even ruder to deny him than interrupt their conversation after that, as so, with a heavy heart, Dylan feels obliged to comply.  
  
It doesn’t mean that he has to be happy about doing so, however. “I’m at work, Aly,” he growls as soon as he connects the call. “Fuck’s sake, how many more times do I have to tell you? Unless someone’s in the process of dying or already dead, it can wait till tonight.”  
  
His brother, as per usual, seems completely unfazed by the frustration that Dylan’s certain is clearly evident in his tone. “The kids aren’t there, are they?” he points out. “You said you’d just be lugging things around and going to pointless meetings about things you already know, right?”  
  
Alasdair, unfortunately, is entirely right, and Dylan bitterly regrets complaining to him about the arrangement the other week. Drunkenness was absolutely no guarantee that Alasdair would forget anything he was told, especially if it was something he might later be able to use it to his advantage.  
  
“I’m still getting paid for it,” Dylan argues.  
  
Alasdair makes a dismissive noise. “Fair enough, but I’m guessing they’re not going to bother that much if you’ve got a real emergency on your hands. And this _is_ an emergency, Dyl. Mikey’s bedroom ceiling finally collapsed.”  
  
They’d done a patch job on the ceiling a couple of summers back using a few bits of old chipboard they’d found lying around in the garage, but it had always been meant as a stopgap measure until Alasdair had the time and money to fix it properly. It had slipped down the list of tasks pending as even more essential parts of the house disintegrated, however, and Dylan has always had a niggling worry at the back of his mind that some day their negligence might result in their little brother being crushed in his bed beneath a heap of rotted beams and plaster.  
  
The image that thought conjures up makes Dylan’s stomach feel as though it’s taken a swift lurch upwards towards his throat. The resultant tight, clogged feeling makes his words come out strained and halting. “Jesus, is he… Is he okay?”  
  
The faint sound of Michael’s voice drifts to his ear before Alasdair can reply. “I’m fine. I wasn’t even in there when it happened.”  
  
“But he could have been,” Alasdair cuts in quickly, sounding fractious. “And where’s he going to sleep tonight?” His voice grows a little muffled, doubtless because he’s moved the phone from his mouth so he can better treat Michael to the full force of his disapproving glare. “And don’t _you_ say the blue bedroom, because you know full well the window doesn’t close properly; you’d catch your fucking death of cold.”  
  
Dylan sighs. “Why do you need me there? I’m sure Michael can help you just as well I would.”  
  
Perhaps more so, as their little brother already has almost half a foot of height on Dylan – who can barely reach the manor’s high ceilings even when he’s standing on the topmost rung of their longest ladder – and Alasdair’s never had a good word to say about Dylan’s DIY skills besides, no matter how many times he presses them into service.  
  
Alasdair snorts disparagingly. “No he fucking couldn’t. He’s got arms like bloody toothpicks; at least you’ve got a bit of weight behind you, even if it is all blubber.”  
  
Michael, who hasn’t quite had enough years of Alasdair’s offhand insults to let them roll off his back like so much water, mounts a snarled protest to that. Dylan, who has, doesn’t bother to acknowledge the taunt, and instead says, “Well, I’ve got a meeting in half an hour, so you’re just going to have to wait for a while.”  
  
A meeting Dylan thinks he could probably skip out on if push came to shove, as Ludwig will probably just be peddling the same shtick about the internet and so on as he did the previous year, and Dylan has already acquainted himself with the new disciplinary rules, but he wants to start as he means to go on, and that means putting down a firm foot when it comes to Alasdair’s demands on his time.  
  
“How about you come over after you’ve finished there, then?” Alasdair says somewhat grudgingly, as though he’s offering Dylan his right testicle to use as a football instead of a slight concession. “I’ve already rung work and got myself the night off, anyway.”  
  
There’s a ‘team building’ exercise planned down at the pub this evening, designed to help them bond with the new staff members by getting shit-faced together. Again, something Dylan can easily miss, but he doesn’t want to. He gets precious little chance to do anything that could even remotely be perceived as ‘fun’ as it is, and those opportunities will just dwindle exponentially once term starts, and Dylan will be lucky if he even manages to make his choir and rugby practices on a consistent basis.  
  
“Can’t make it, I’m afraid, Aly,” he says, inwardly proud of the strength of his spine, which usually turns to nothing better than rubber in short order where his big brother’s concerned. “How about the weekend?”  
  
Alasdair makes a strange noise in reply; a sort of strangled gasp that sounds like hastily swallowed laughter. “I’m going down to see Arthur and Gabriela,” he says eventually, once he’s sufficiently recovered his composure.  
  
Dylan grimaces, annoyed that his brother doesn’t even have the decency to invent a halfway decent excuse to fob him off with. Arthur hasn’t mentioned anything about such a visit (nor can Dylan imagine a situation where he might conceive of inviting Alasdair alone), and the only time Alasdair had taken two days off work in a row since he finished school was to spend them in the only company he seems to find worthy of missing wages for; company which certainly isn’t any of his siblings’.  
  
“I’m sending Mikey to stay with Claire,” Alasdair continues unprompted. “Didn’t want to come back to half the house smashed up and everything covered in sick.”  
  
Dylan very much doubts that Michael would do anything worse than playing video games into the early hours of the morning if left to his own devices. He’s not exactly a party sort of person, and neither, by all accounts, is his solitary friend (though said friend _does_ seem liable to leave a trail of destruction behind him, if only due to over-exuberance and clumsiness).  
  
If it is a lie, though, it would be one easily dismantled by a single phone call to their cousin, and that, coupled with the lack of a rebuttal from Michael, leads Dylan to the conclusion that, amazing though it seems, Alasdair really is planning on spending his weekend in London.  
  
Which leaves him little choice but to suggest, “I suppose I could come over a little later tonight; maybe eight o’clock or so?” because he really wouldn’t want Michael to have to resort to the blue bedroom and then possibly have his resulting bout of pneumonia on his conscience.  
  
A quick half pint of cider and apologies will have to make do in lieu of actually enjoying himself tonight.  
  
“See you then,” Alasdair says, and then ends the call without either thanks or farewells.  
  
Dylan scowls at his now silent phone, but, unfortunately, it isn’t half as satisfying as being able to do it to his brother’s face, and thus his aggravation remains undimmed until he looks up and sees Feliciano regarding him with wide, worried eyes.  
  
“Is your brother okay?” he asks.  
  
Alasdair had been in a particularly – and Dylan is feeling uncharitable enough to dub it uncharacteristically – good mood the night of Alfred’s party, and Feliciano – along with several of Dylan’s other colleagues – seems quite enamoured with him following it; enough that he sounds genuinely concerned.  
  
So Dylan bites down the complaint he was going to make, and attempts to smile reassuringly. “He’s fine. There’s just been a bit of an accident at his house. Nothing major.”  
  
The smile obviously passes muster, as Feliciano returns a relieved-looking one of his own, before turning his attention back to making an inventory of his art supplies and picking up the dropped threads of their interrupted conversation.  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
The stink of coffee hits Llewellyn as he wanders in through the staff room door. It’s a familiar smell too, the sort he’d often walked into when Angus was still married and the women he lived with insisted on drinking the stuff. She left with her coffee maker about three years ago, so the scent is like walking into a memory.  
  
The owner of the coffee turns out to be the handsome man but ill-tempered Lovino, who sits nonchalantly on the edge of the table, his coffee mug in one hand while he reams through a newspaper. He looks like the sort of composed model Llewellyn often notices in magazines, if only because of the slight downturn of his lips and the way his left leg hooks over his right one.  
  
He can’t think of a greeting though, as he’s neither friendly enough with the man to warrant it, and he’s certain Lovino heard him enter but has decided he cares more about whatever is printed on the page.  
  
The making and consumption of tea is the only thing that matters to Llewellyn, regardless, as he’s still drifting in circles, knowing all the things that need doing yet not practised enough to have an efficient system in place to cope. There are certain things they can teach you in your training, but putting it all into practice is a different matter. Hopefully the scheduled meeting will go better.  
  
He pops the kettle on, making every illusion possible that he’s failed to notice Lovino as much as Lovino has failed to notice him. So far he’s talked to the other members of the art department and had another visit from Alfred, who seems like he’s simply wandering around the building, supposedly from being completely efficient and having everything done.  
  
There are only a few mugs on offer, so he selects the one that’s drying upside down by the sink, and then drops a teabag into it and listens to the water bubble and hiss. As soon as the tea is made and the teabag discarded in the bin – which is already half full of spent paper cups, sandwich boxes and a single tin of what looks like red bull – Llewellyn plops himself down at the table, making a point to sit a polite and not overly-familiar distance away from his co-worker.  
  
He pulls out his wad of sheet music and begins his plans for a lesson about scales and arpeggios, the names of all the notes and a basic tune for the students to learn on a clarinet.  
  
He only starts to feel Lovino’s eyes burn the side of his skull when he makes an impromptu bid to undo the foil around one of the Viscounts he pilfered from Richard’s cupboards (he feels a touch guilty as they were for Oliver’s lunch, but he likely didn’t need the added sugar anyway).  
  
He ceases all movement and turns his head. Lovino is indeed looking at him, hard and unflinching. Though his eyes are a wonderful colour: a sort of honey glaze with green undertones. Unusual and fascinating. Hot and smouldering yet icey and cool like a bitter wind cutting through a warm day.  
  
“I’m sorry, I’ll be quiet.” Llewellyn quickly pulls his biscuit free and sets the foil aside, flattening it out with his palm as quietly as he can. “I was just –”  
  
Lovino’s mouth twitches up on one side, wrinkling his nose in such a way that the expression appears to be worn quite often. His attention skims back to the newspaper but his posture tightens off, as if to make a bigger show of himself than he was previously.  
  
“I was wondering,” Llewellyn blurts out before the silence can grow too uncomfortable, “what exactly were you hoping to do. With the room I’m in?”  
  
Lovino doesn’t answer, merely focuses in more on the newspaper, his shoulders slanting upwards to make a show of his disinterest in talking to anybody about anything.  
  
Llewellyn is mildly concerned, as the fact he’s even on the teaching staff at all seems to bother the other man, which is a shame. He’s the sort that he’d prefer to be on the better side of.

Not that Lovino has a bad side, he’s handsome from every angle and makes scowling look like the endless radiance of God himself, shining down upon mere mortals like a rain of gold.  
  
Or, something like that. Maybe not quite so poetic.  
  
Llewellyn scoops up his tea, and feels the need to cower on the side of his chair that’s furthest away from his companion. He rather wishes for the company of any of the other teachers, who seem at least a little amiable, if completely forgetful.  
  
Llewellyn takes a swift bite from his biscuit, turning it in his fingers as he listens to the rustle of paper as Lovino finally turns the page. Time ticks by, continuing the slow crawl towards twelve o’clock and the next staff meeting. The hard part starts on Monday, which is a worry, as Llewellyn was called in at such short notice and has to wonder if perhaps he hasn’t ruined his life by being here.  
  
He could easily have worked for Richard and frittered his life away without as much stress.  
  
“So, um, I should get back to work. I want to see about arranging the desks in my room a little.” Why he feels a need to inform Lovino of this is unclear, even to himself, and the pointlessness of it isn’t lost on the other man it seems. He makes a single irked noise and flips the paper over.  
  
Llewellyn’s next move is swift, stupidly instinctive but driven by a sort of politeness that most of his family have for no reason other than the inability to stop themselves. His hand sinks into his bag and he produces his last pilfered viscount, holding it out for Lovino to take. “I’m sorry for the interruption,” he says, unable to withdraw his hand now he’s committed himself to the action.  
  
Lovino peers at his hand like it might be some form of hideous spider, before he looks to Llewellyn’s face indignantly, apparently hating even the most delicious – and fanciest – of biscuits Llewellyn is capable of getting his hands on at short notice.  
  
Yet, eventually the silence and awkwardness grows to be too much even for him it seems, as he plucks the green foil up and holds it between his thumb and fore finger, like he’s holding something smelly and distasteful.  
  
The smile that slithers onto Llewellyn’s face feels far too bright and chirpy, and the way he kinks himself up onto his toes and down again almost childish. Yet his eyes drift to Lovino’s hands. Elegant, dexterous things which look soft and supple. The sort of fingers that-  
  
“You have pianist’s hands.” Llewellyn says, his own way of diverting his attention away from less tasteful thoughts. Yet he knows instantly that it was a mistake.  
  
Lovino’s eyes narrow and his lips part into the bud of a snarled: “What?”  
  
“Your hands,” Llewellyn holds his own hand up, he was told many times he had the hands of a pianist, as they’re long and slender, even if they’re a little coarse and unattractive from years of near abusive instrument playing. They’re also naturally dry which doesn’t help matters. “You have nice hands, the hands of somebody who can play piano.”  
  
Lovino’s eyes wander to his own hand, where it remains in the air, clutching the biscuit, then drift to Llewellyn’s, face screwing up as he seems to find them as distasteful as the mint flavoured treat in his grasp.  
  
“It means you have wonderfully slender fingers. Not that you necessarily play the piano.” Llewellyn feels his laughter pop out and his fingers dash through his hair. “Though you might play piano, I probably shouldn’t jump to conclusions.”  
  
“I don’t play piano.” Lovino answers, his hand curling around the gifted biscuit and his face angling away.  
  
“Chefs hands then. For skilful cutting and dicing and such,” Llewellyn amends and shuffles backwards, lifting his bag and papers before starting the swift scuttle out of the room, taking his tea with him. “I’ll see you later. Desks to arrange.”  
  
With that he manages to barge into Dylan and Feliciano nearly upending all his supplies and scalding himself with his tea. He wrestles it into shape and politely scoots out the door, keeping his head low and his pace swift.  
  
“I wonder where he’s off to in such a hurry,” Dylan asks, sounding a little peevish to Llewellyn’s ears, likely for the rude behaviour, which Llewellyn decides to apologise for as soon as the opportunity arises. He hopes he can blame such skittishness on first day nerves  
  
He’s treated to the sound of Lovino setting the biscuit aside with a dismissive sounding, “Who knows, he’s a weirdo,” before the fluttering of paper starts up again.  
  
Feliciano, who seems to already be splattered with paint and charcoal dust, chimes in with a bemused-sounding, “Who was he? I’ve never seen him before.”  
  
Llewellyn is beginning to think that all of this is just some cruel form of hazing. As there’s no way a group of people can possibly be so forgetful as a unit. Especially since he spoke to Feliciano for a good ten minutes, and had apparently made a fairly good first impression.  
  
As far as those go anyway.  
  
He can only lament his own ridiculousness with a muttering of “Chef’s hands, ugh, stupid, stupid!” before he realises he’s gone in the wrong direction, and has to pivot around and slink past the – still baffled looking – Dylan and Feliciano again, making sure to avoid all eye contact.  
  
He plans on venting his frustrations out on his violin or piano, then heading around for the scheduled lecture on internet safety and disciplinary procedures.  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
Sometimes, Dylan can hardly believe that Feliciano and Lovino are brothers. Facially, they might almost be close enough to be twins, but somehow the childish fullness of Feliciano’s cheeks and the guileless breadth of his eyes renders his equally handsome features merely pleasant rather than mouth-drying-ly striking.  
  
He’s as open and good-natured as his brother is shuttered and standoffish, perpetually happy where Lovino’s expression has lifted from a frown all of twice since Dylan met him, and even the slightly irritating habits the brothers share seem somehow less irksome when practiced by Feliciano. (Their penchant for peppering their speech with Italian, for example, which seems like something of an affectation given that they were both born and brought up in Macclesfield, as were their parents.)  
  
As far Dylan’s concerned, however, the most noteworthy difference between them is that he actually enjoys talking to Feliciano rather than just looking at him.  
  
He’d tried telling Lovino about the poetry competition he was considering running this year, but had met with nothing but indifference. (Even that was probably wishful thinking; it was more likely boredom.) Feliciano, on the other hand, is full of questions for him as they wander towards the staff room in search of tea and – if they’re lucky and someone has actually thought to restock the little kitchenette ahead of time –  perhaps a biscuit or two.  
  
Will there be a prize for the best one? (Dylan was considering publishing the two best from each year in a little book, and then flogging it to the parents in the name of fundraising for the school.)  
  
Will the staff be able to enter? (Dylan _hadn’t_ considered that, but on reflection, it sounds like a fantastic idea, though he doubts he’ll get many takers.)  
  
Will there…?  
  
Whatever Feliciano was about to ask dissolves into a shocked rush of exhaled air as someone barrels into them, apparently in such a hurry to escape the staff room that he didn’t have chance to check whether or not the way was clear first before running out of its door. Feliciano looks a little winded in the aftermath, and his accidental assailant looks a little shocked and contrite, although he doesn’t actually vocalise an apology before haring off down the corridor towards the cafeteria as though his arse is on fire.  
  
“I wonder where he’s off to in such a hurry?” Dylan muses aloud, because the cafeteria’s closed today, so food can’t be answer. It strikes him a second later that the fleeing man is a new teacher, and thus probably just lost, but before he has chance to raise his voice and shout after him, Lovino speaks up from within the staff room with a dismissive, “Who knows. He’s a weirdo.”  
  
Apparently weird enough to put him off his food, given the way he drops the biscuit he was holding with a disgusted sneer more suited to finding it unexpectedly full of maggots. Dylan tries to give him a sympathetic look, but Lovino ignores him in favour of picking up the newspaper that had been resting on his lap, and opening it full spread so his face is completely hidden from view.  
  
“Who was he?” Feliciano asks, sounding a little bemused. “I’ve never seen him before.”  
  
Dylan is about to tell him, but realises as soon as he opens his mouth that he can’t remember the new teacher’s surname.  
  
He’s a little ashamed to admit it to himself, but he’s fairly sure he only remembers his first name because it just so happened to be the same one that Dylan and Arthur’s Swansea-born dad had initially wanted to call Arthur. Their mum, however, had had other ideas. After being persuaded into Alasdair James and Caitlin Aoife by Scots-Irish American Dad Number One for her twins, and Dylan Gwyn for her next boy, she was adamant that child number four should be called Arthur George, in honour of her father and grandfather.  
  
“Llewellyn,” Dylan decides to say anyway – reasoning that a little knowledge is surely better than none – peering down the corridor after the man in question, whose steps have started slowing; perhaps realising without intervention that he’s headed the wrong way. “I think he’s taking over from Mrs Terwilliger.”


	2. Chapter 2

“Nice of you to join us, Mr Walsh.” Mr Beilschmidt says without looking up from the small bundle of papers in his grasp.  
  
Llewellyn apologises breathlessly as he wanders towards the desk. Any joy he might have earned about having his name be remembered is lost to the wave of shame and guilt he feels for having apparently held everyone up for some unknown amount of time. “I got a little lost.” He says, because it’s largely true, his amble in search of a men’s room had taken him down some series of halls he had no business being in and he’d already been running late at the time.  
  
The meeting however doesn’t kick off with his arrival, and a quick scan of the room betrays the absence of two people, one being Lovino, the other some other person who Llewellyn can’t quite recall.  
  
“Try and be on time from now on,” Mr Beilschmidt says, finally looking up. The warning is faint but heavy on the shoulders none the less. He doesn’t strike Llewellyn as the sort of man to be unfair, but he also seems like he expects to be listened to.  
  
“Yes, sir,” Llewellyn mumbles, eyes set on the wood of the desk, likely looking completely shamefaced. It causes a ripple of adoring laughter from a few of the women around the table; the sort reserved for cooing over small children and puppies.  
  
After that the door opens with an almighty thud, as if somebody has opted towards kicking it open instead of using the handle like a civilised person.  
  
Lovino strides into the room, giving Mr Beilschmidt a dirty looking glare before studying the empty seat that resides beside Llewellyn, and making a point to walk past it, plonking himself down next to Dylan, who seems staggered by this, even if the handsome brunet doesn’t return the cheerful greeting sent his way, or even make eye contact.  
  
The door opens again a mere five seconds later, this time with a gentle swoosh, and the latecomer wanders aimlessly towards his seat, plopping himself down before glancing up from the book he’s reading, snapping it closed and smiling. “I apologise, I was reading _The Silence of the Lambs_. So engaging.”  
  
“So is that everyone?” Mr Beilschmidt glances around, adjusting his expression for each person. Llewellyn earns a soft frown.  
  
It deepens as it shifts towards Jakub, who is too distracted with turning his badly worn looking tome on the table to worry.  
  
“Today we are going to go over the updated disciplinary code, as well as the internet and privacy safety precautions.” Mr Beilschmidt stands and walks around the room, handing each person a wedge of paper – apparently not trusting them to simply pass them around – and then flicks the lights off and pulls a small device from his pocket that starts up a projector. “We’ll also be discussing the hiring of buses for school trips. I don’t want another shambles like last year.”  
  
“Are we going to be talking about the bus passes? We had so many complaints about that.” A young-looking woman pipes up, resting her head on her hands and her pen behind her ear. “If we don’t resolve it, parents will start complaining.”  
  
“I’m already taking care of it. It’s not your jobs to worry about it.” Mr Beilschmidt clears his throat. “I also want to know what decisions you’ve all reached regarding the after school activities and competitions.”  
  
Llewellyn snaps awake at the mention, almost starting to raise his hand and inquire if he has to answer on the spot considering how new he is, yet he’s interrupted by the headmaster’s voice, which grows a little louder to ensure everyone pays attention it seems.  
  
The meeting however isn’t exactly thrilling, the form he’s been supplied is dry and unhelpful, and Mr Beilschmidt – while he certainly seems to know what he’s talking about – isn’t incredibly engaging. Llewellyn soon catches himself scrawling down samples of tunes on his paper, mimicking the pattern of speech as he hears it instead of the actual words, which turn into a mess of noise.  
  
The pen must be set aside to avoid any further graffiti, deciding to study the rest of the teachers around him and see who’s paying attention and how they process things.  
  
Jakub is simultaneously reading his book and noting things down – a multitasker –but the writing is a little difficult to read, broken and decipherable only to him, it seems.  
  
Feliciano appears to be doodling all over his sheets, pausing every now and again to write furiously.  
  
The young woman who piped up before has half-lidded eyes and looks to be daydreaming, pretending to take notice only when the imposing blond man sees fit to look to her.  
  
Alfred fidgets about in his seat, leaning backwards till only the back legs support his weight. The ceiling appears to interest him more than anything else. He nearly topples backwards and makes a point to act as though nothing happened when he gets an impatient little scowl.  
  
From there, Llewellyn’s gaze ends up where he suspected it might. Lovino sits with his pen in his mouth, chewing at the lid and looking particularly striking under the harsh white light of the projector. His eyes so far off and deep that getting lost in them might lead to an inability to breathe. He fixes his tie, emphasising his slender hands, and then leans back on his seat and makes a single lazy note on his paper. He then lifts the pages, apparently so Llewellyn can see.  
  
‘What are you looking at?’ is penned across the edge of the paper and Llewellyn averts his gaze immediately, finding that the first subject of discussion is still rolling along, each point about the disciplinary code. It sounds the same as when Llewellyn read up about it several months ago.  
  
Perhaps he was in the know before Mr Beilschmidt?  
  
His eyes drift back to Lovino, who instantly notices and narrows his own. The intensity of them makes Llewellyn immediately look to Dylan, who seems to be trying to pay attention, but keeps looking towards Lovino as if wanting to ask him about some point or other he’s missed.  
  
At least until Llewellyn and Dylan’s eyes meet and Dylan smiles. It’s not pleasant like it was before, but not entirely mean-spirited, so Llewellyn gets to work returning the gentle upturn of his lips and nods before lifting his pen and pretending to be very invested in section five part B of paragraph six.  
  
“If the problem continues, I want you to refer back to the student’s form teacher, but all serious behavioural problems will be taken up with…” Mr Beilschmidt changes his slide, which makes the light from the projector turn a pale blue.  
  
Llewellyn starts noting down everything he’s managed to pick up while he still remembers it, but soon can’t help scratching a series of lines across the top of his page and marking out the notes he hears, pleased by the composition and timing of them, and considering expanding them out into his first practical lesson. It seems fitting for such a thing to be inspired by the headmaster.  
  
“Mister Walsh, are you listening?” Mr Beilschmidt’s use of his name cracks the whip on Llewellyn’s concentration, making him startle and send his pen skittering away from him like a rabbit would take to its beaters from a hungry fox. Llewellyn quickly clasps his fingers together and smiles brightly on impulse.  
  
“Sorry, I was –”  
  
“Do you know the senior members of staff?”  
  
Llewellyn casts his eye around, as if he might be able to tell by looking. He can’t pick anyone out and nobody seems invested enough in him to help. He can only shake his head and shrink slightly, fearing a scolding.  
  
“I’ll introduce you to them if you stay behind afterwards, and we can go over the demerit system in detail”.  
  
“I’ve already read it, thank you.” Llewellyn huffs out a breath, gladdened to have avoided the bullet for now. “Mrs Terwilliger kept a copy in her filing cabinet, and it’s similar to the one I used in…” He sinks in his seat as he realises he’s starting to ramble. “Sorry, meeting the senior staff will be fine. Thank you ,sir.”  
  
If Llewellyn didn’t know better – and he’s certain he does – he’d almost swear Mr Beilschmidt looked vaguely impressed, but then he merely nods and smiles, though it’s a rather starchy sort of smile. “Now, in a bid to improve moral among the students, I’d like everyone to amend writing one positive statement in their homework diaries to two or three.”  
  
A quick glance around helps Llewellyn reassure himself that nobody has truly noticed his minor outburst. He wasn’t sure whether poking around in his new filing cabinet was strictly okay seeing as the old teachers name was still stuck on each drawer, and several of her files remained inside, each one relating back to procedure and work ethic.  
  
It occurs to him, and only then, that he’s likely got some big boots to fill and judging by the reactions of his peers, he’s doing a shabby job, thus far, of even stringing the laces up right.  
  
His eyes settle on Lovino one more time, before something in his brain activates and he only has room for Mr Beilschmidt’s voice and the taking of notes.

 

* * *

  
  
The bar the teachers decamp to after work, unlike Richards’s pit, has an air of charm to it, the lights at just the right level to avoid early headaches and there’s a waft of music from some unknown source. It’s a nice pub, but his invitation to come along had almost not happened at all, but the long night of trying to help Oliver get his homework done, only for Richard to start getting impatient and subsequently, nasty, is averted for the time being. His short text hasn’t been replied to, which could bode well or ill depending on circumstance.  
  
He is, however, put off from staying, partly due to his fervent ability to fade into the background, to the point where he appears to merely be a stranger to the group of collected teachers and just has no sense of personal boundaries.  
  
Jakub, who sits beside him, seems inclined towards quietly reading his book and drinking his beer, yet still seems connected to the others somehow, answering back to some comment they’re making without so much as lifting his head or allowing his eyes to stop the diligent crawl across the pages. He’d had half the book to go when he’d first stepped into the staff meeting, and now he’s nearing the end.  
  
Llewellyn gently eases his legs around his stool, finding himself more disappointed by the run of his first real day of work than he feels he should. Possibly because he had some false impression that teachers had a wide sense of solidarity and everyone would have their place in the group.  
  
He also feels the same horrid feeling of rejection he remembers from his school days. While other children formed friendships, he was on the outside, picked on and driven into the music room because he had eventually needed an escape from his tedium, and he’d found it in the grand old harp that sat unused in the corner, as alone and unwanted as he was, rejected by the musicians and the other instruments for being old.  
  
Fingers curl at the distant memory of being unable to write notes or help wash his father’s car because he’d sat with the harp and played it until layers of skin had peeled away. The pain had been excruciating. But not as painful as the day the old harp went away, sold on to some second hand store.  
  
Its vacancy had been filled by the piano and the violin and he’s almost tempted to stumble off home and reacquaint himself with one of them, though his keyboard is merely there for him to keep well-practiced, and his violin, while it does rest beside him on the floor in its case, will likely make him seem like an even bigger freak if he were to pull it out and fill the air with his mournful playing.  
  
After his third long drink of cider he realises that this how things are now, and the hard part hasn’t even started. He’s absolutely destroyed his own life and if he wrenches himself free he’ll be subject to more of Richard’s ‘I told you so’ and end up wasting his years away behind that pub counter because all he’s good for is plucking the strings of some useless piece of wood.  
  
“Llewellyn, are you all right?” Dylan, who seems to be in the process of hauling himself away from his friends (Llewellyn catches himself thinking the word ‘friends’ in a bitter, nasty way that he’s always felt better suited for high school kids), asks. The words, though they are thinly dipped in concern, are disinvested to a point, as if the other man is determined not to engage him more than he needs to so he can escape.  
  
It’s not a particular surprise, nor does Llewellyn feel the need to respond with any great gusto. He forces a smile and nods, fingers turning his glass before it slides away from his fingertips. When Dylan doesn’t make a move to take this answer and move on Llewellyn allows himself a cursory little, “Yes, fine. Thank you. I‘m just a little tired.”  
  
“You and me both, though I’m heading over to help my brother with a little house keeping.” Dylan seems to weigh his options, then checks the time using the phone in his grasp, “You know, I remember my first day. Surprised you’re still awake.” Dylan grins and plonks his arse down on the stool beside Llewellyn, but making no commitment to stay. “On my first day I ended up passed out on my brother’s sofa. Then again I spent my first day trying to convince a bunch of first years that a colon was useful for more than just making little smilies on their text messages.”  
  
“Did they believe you?” Llewellyn can’t help smiling, but it makes him tired to do so.  
  
Dylan twiddles his thumbs and looks a little guilty. “Well, no, they all handed in work covered in little smiles for weeks. Some of them still do.” As if on cue Dylan’s phone chirps, sounding almost foul tempered despite the generic sounding ring tone. “That’ll be my brother. Apparently, he can’t be without me.”  
  
“You should get going then, I don’t want to hold you up.” Llewellyn plucks up his glass and gets ready to take a sip, so the conversation can have a full stop.  
  
“I’ll see you again on Monday, have a nice weekend.” Dylan grins, a strangely enticing show of teeth and freckled cheeks that gives Llewellyn pause, only for the smile to dissolve into simple pleasantness and lose its radiance.  
  
“You too. Hope your house keeping goes well.” Llewellyn nips at his lip as Dylan gets to work buttoning his coat and making a bid to escape. Yet Llewellyn feels the need to take a gentle hold of the coats sleeve, making Dylan stare down at him with curious eyes. “Hey, Dylan?” His grip loosens yet his tongue tightens. The helpless beg he feels for some clue that things will get better hemming itself tight in his throat.  
  
“Yes?” Dylan asks, blinking rapidly as confusion seems to give way to concern.  
  
“I’m sorry. About when I ran into you and Feliciano,” he says, swallowing his fears and offering up an apologetic smile. “I should have said so before.”  
  
“No problem.” Dylan allows his hand to drift loose and they part ways. Dylan’s pace picking up once he’s checked his phone, and Llewellyn hears the faint hint of an annoyed swear and a rumble of irritation as he pushes the door open and steps out into the freshly pouring rain.  
  
Llewellyn frowns and shifts back around in his seat. He discovers that his neighbour, Jakub, has now finished his book and is getting to work on another one he had in his bag.  
  
The dark haired man locks eyes with him for a moment before his hand plucks up the copy of _The Silence of the Lambs_ he’d set aside and presses it into Llewellyn’s hands, the picture of a hand releasing a terrifying moth still vivid despite a slight curling of the edges and a faint smell of smoke and aftershave.  
  
“Welcome to hell,” Jakub says with a soft smile that cuts small trenches into the area between his mouth and cheek. His eyes twinkling with a good natured sort of mischief as he flicks open the first page of his novel – _Hannibal_ , apparently he’s reading them in order – then he drifts back into silence.  
  
Llewellyn supposes it’s as good a sentiment as any and pops the book open. It has the funk of a second hand store about it, yet he allows his eyes to slink over the first paragraph.  
  
‘ _Behavioural science, the FBI section that deals with serial murder, is on the bottom floor of the academy building at Quantico, half buried in the earth…_ ’  
  
Sounds about right to Llewellyn.

 

* * *

  
  
Although Alasdair had exaggerated the extent of the damage to Michael’s bedroom ceiling somewhat to Dylan, it’s still a complete fucking mess.  
  
The corner that’s collapsed has been threatening to do so for years, ballooning slowly outwards as its wooden framework distended, swollen from the leak in the roof above it that they’ve never been able to fix properly. Alasdair, Arthur and Dylan had managed to hold it back for a while, but it kept sending out thin, exploratory tendrils of black mould from beneath the chipboard they’d nailed over it, so Michael could never forgot it was only temporarily subdued; simply biding its time.  
  
(When he was a little younger, he had a recurring nightmare in which he was forced to stand paralysed and watch as those fine threads grew wider and longer, expanding until they formed thick tentacles which dropped down from above to curl tight and suffocating around his neck. He’d made the mistake of telling his brothers about them when they became regular enough to start disturbing his sleep on near-nightly basis, and was told that they were due to ‘late night cheese’, ‘sublimated desires’ and ‘an over-active imagination (but they must be awful, Michael; I’m sorry you have to deal with them)’ respectively. He’d kept the fact that they continued for another six months to himself after that.)  
  
Nevertheless, the hole that’s been ripped into the ceiling is still huge; a gaping black maw ringed with jagged teeth formed by broken beams. A large hunk of wood from one of them had landed square in the middle of his pillow, exactly where his head would have been if Alasdair hadn’t forced him to get up at some ungodly hour to go and freeze his bollocks off in the garden, standing around holding things for his brother whilst he tried to cobble a shed back together that had also lost its tenuous grip on integrity during the night.  
  
The rest of his bed is covered in chunks of plaster, one of which seems to have bounced off the mattress at just the right angle to take out one side of his ancient telly’s casing before coming to a rest beneath his desk. His borrowed Xbox 360 is covered by a thick layer of white dust but thankfully looks otherwise undamaged.  
  
“Well, we’d best get this mess cleaned up, hadn’t we?” Alasdair says, his eyes narrowing down until they’re little more than slits as he surveys the room.  
  
“You sure my arms can take it?” Michael asks, ignoring the heavy-duty bin bag his brother holds out towards him. “They might just snap under the strain.”  
  
Alasdair chuckles mirthlessly, tells him, “Nice try, Mikey,” and then throws the bag towards his head so he’s that forced to catch it simply to stop it from wrapping itself around his face instead.  
  
Alasdair then immediately zeroes in on the biggest piece of rotten timber – with his bulky muscles straining against his plaid shirt and scruffy stubble-beard, he looks a little like a domestic lumberjack at work as he hoists it up onto his shoulder – leaving Michael to deal with the plaster by unspoken concord.  
  
The first shard he picks up crumbles into untold pieces in his hand, which spill through his fingers to litter an even greater spread of the hundred-year-old carpet. As does the next. And the next.  
  
“This is pointless,” he says, grinding the fourth lump of plaster beneath his heel to save himself the effort of bending down, because the result will be the same anyway.  
  
“Not if you want somewhere to sleep tonight, it’s not,” Alasdair says as he marches past, what looks like half a tree hooked beneath one arm. “Stop complaining and get on with it.”  
  
With the blue bedroom vetoed for his use, there really is nowhere else unless he’s willing to bed down on the floor in the library or drawing room for the night. (Both choices which are unlikely to be supported by Alasdair, anyway, as they’re just as draughty as the blue bedroom and twice as cold, as the heating’s never turned on downstairs unless the inside of the windows starts icing up, and only on its lowest setting even then.)  
  
It’s a ridiculous situation for a house with ten bedrooms, but so many of them are out of bounds for one reason or another. No-one’s stepped foot in either Mum or Granddad’s bedroom since they died unless it’s to do a bit of dusting or reset the mousetraps, and they’re all so protective over their own space that sleeping in Dylan, Arthur or Caitlin’s bed feels almost akin to wearing their underwear, never mind that they hardly ever use them themselves nowadays. The yellow bedroom is filled wall to wall with offcuts of timber and carpets and the rose/fushia bedroom (the exact shade has been the source of contention between Dylan and Arthur for almost a decade; personally, Michael thinks it’s just pink and his brothers should find more important things to worry about) is missing half of its floorboards.  
  
Michael sighs heavily, grudgingly accepting his fate, and then trudges down to the kitchen in search of the dustpan and brush.

 

* * *

 

 

 

It’s nearly three o’clock when Alasdair decides they’ve made enough headway that they deserve to take a break for lunch.

The muscles across Michael’s shoulders and at the small of his back are both throbbing dully, bunched painfully tight due to being held so long in the same, crouched position whilst he used his brush. (He gets no sympathy from Alasdair, who tells him to, “Stop moaning; you’re too young to have a bad back.”) His hair and every last centimetre of his exposed skin is covered in white dust, apart from, he presumes, the area directly below his eyes, which has doubtless been washed clean by their streaming because he’d been foolish enough to try rubbing them when they started to itch.

The inside of his mouth feels gritty, but the cup of tea Alasdair makes him doesn’t seem to help wash it clean. It just tastes like plaster dust.

So does his ham and cheese sandwich.

 

* * *

 

By the time the grandfather clock out in the hall sonorously announces the arrival of five o’clock, Michael’s arms have started to go numb, but the carpet’s pattern has finally re-emerged.

A sight that wouldn’t usually be much cause for celebration unless one were a particular fan of huge, stylised and slightly threadbare pink and green roses – which Michael most certainly is not – but, given the circumstances, now engenders a deep sense of satisfaction.

He slowly straightens up to better survey his good work, and Alasdair hands him a bucket full of hot soapy water and a sponge.

“You’ve still got the woodwork to clean,” Alasdair says, before taking himself off downstairs to fetch their ancient vac.

 

* * *

 

Alasdair and Michael are perched side by side on Michael’s bed, finishing up a late dinner – ham and cheese sandwiches again; Alasdair’s culinary repertoire is hardly extensive – when Dylan appears at the bedroom door, water dripping from the point of his chin and the bottom of his old brown duffel coat to puddle around his feet.

“Pissing it down out there,” he says, somewhat superfluously, offering them both a weak grin.

Alasdair looks down at his watch before he bothers to acknowledge Dylan, and even then it’s only to tell him, “You’re late.”

Dylan doesn’t quite roll his eyes in response, but the way they quickly flick heavenwards suggests that he only just managed to stop himself from doing so. “Ten minutes,” he says as he wanders over to the bed, unbuttoning his coat as he goes. “I hardly think the delay’s insurmountable.”

As Dylan draws closer, Michael catches a faint waft of alcohol drifting from him. Alasdair smells it, too, judging by the way his nostrils flare. A scowl soon follows, and one corner of his lips curls into a sneer.

“’Team building’ in the pub, were you, Dyl?” he asks, almost growling the words out.

“Yes, I was bonding with my colleagues over a shared activity, Aly,” Dylan says, placing the palms of his hands together and then intertwining his fingers as though in demonstration. “Which I think is pretty much the textbook definition of a team building exercise.”

Alasdair’s mouth opens on an fierce exhalation, and he lurches to his feet, but instead of disputing the point further as Michael expected him to, he simply snaps, “I’ll go and get the rest of the plasterboard,” before stomping out of the room

“He’s a little ray of sunshine today, isn’t he?” Dylan says quietly once their brother has disappeared from view – but not from earshot, as he seems to be taking great pains to slam his feet as heavily as possible with each step he takes – sinking down onto the bed beside Michael. (He almost plants his fat arse right on top of Alasdair’s half-finished bag of Wotsits; Michael only just manages to grab them in time to keep them from getting crushed, which he thinks now makes them his by right of salvage or something like.)

Michael has a sneaking suspicion that Alasdair’s steadily worsening mood has something to do with his impending trip to London, and, for once, he doesn’t think it’s the prospect of spending time with Arthur that’s the cause. The last time Michael had spoken to Arthur’s wife, Gabriela, she’d let slip that Alasdair wasn’t the only visitor they were expecting that weekend, and –

And she’d cut herself off before she’d named any names – turning their talk swiftly schoolwards; somewhere Michael’s noticed most adults tend to take conversations with him if their course happens to wander in an awkward direction – but Michael can take a good guess. Beyond Arthur, there are really only two points where Gabby and Alasdair’s social circles overlap, and Michael can’t imagine his brother shelling out almost a hundred quid on a train ticket to go and see his brother-in-law.

However, he doesn’t have any real evidence, and he’s not going to bring up Francis to Dylan on nothing more than a hunch. He’d fret himself sick over even the possibility of Alasdair meeting up with him again, and Alasdair would only deny it anyway if questioned, whether or not it was the truth.

“Well, my ceiling did cave in,” he says instead.


	3. Chapter 3

Arthur twitches aside the living room curtain, and peers out at the road below their flat. It’s unusually quiet – likely many of the street’s residents are nursing hangovers in bed as Arthur himself would normally be at eight o’clock on a Saturday morning – the only sign of life an old man wearing a heavy overcoat standing outside the newsagent on the corner, smoking a fag and pretending not to notice his Border Terrier as it cocks its leg against the wheel of a parked Audi.  
  
“What time did you say he’d be here again?” Arthur asks, letting the curtain fall again as he turns away from the window.  
  
Gabriela doesn’t even look up from the dense medical textbook spread open on her lap as she answers, “About ten.” There’s only the tiniest hint of irritation in her tone even though Arthur’s lost count of the number of times they’ve had this particular exchange since they got up this morning.  
  
He’s not sure why he keeps asking, only perhaps that there’s some small, optimistic part of him that still holds out hope that it’s all some elaborate joke that Gabriela and Antonio concocted between them and never quite expected him to fall for, given how outlandish it is. That she’ll suddenly get tired of the whole thing if he repeats himself just the right number of times to be truly aggravating, and reassure him that, no, he isn’t going to have to share their home for an indeterminate amount of time with the most awful man in existence just because Gabriela’s brother doesn’t have the good sense to pick his friends better.  
  
It seems unlikely, though, as Antonio could never have kept the deception up for so long. The man’s about as opaque as fucking glass; barely capable of even the basic minimum of guile – namely the proper application of necessary white lies and creative truths – needed to function in society.  
  
He rues the day he decided to seat Antonio at the same table as Alasdair at his wedding. At the very least, he should have left that fateful ‘plus one’ off his brother’s invitation.  
  
If only he’d shown a little foresight, this entire dreadful situation could have been avoided.

 

* * *

  
  
It’s been four years since Alasdair last caught a train.  
  
He’d been on his way to London then, too, if only as the first leg of his journey to Paris. He’d felt the same strange mix of trepidation and anticipation then, he recalls, sitting just as low and tight in his guts.  
  
He can’t seem to stay still; prowling up and down the platform his train is due to arrive at, sitting down every so often on one of the hard metal benches dotted along it, only to spring back up again a moment later because his legs are almost burning with their need to keep moving.  
  
He simultaneously wants to be on the train already and to have never left home; to have listened to Arthur in the first place and not booked his ticket, because he IS a fool, just like his brother had said.  
  
He’s a fool to think this time will be any different to the last, or, indeed, any of the times before that save the first. A fool to think it will be anything more than a meaningless fuck (two, if he’s lucky) and a brief pretence at some sort of mutuality of feelings until the novelty of the act wears off yet again.  
  
But he can’t help feeling that same stupid sense of optimism, the one that keeps him patching up a house that’s probably long past the possibility that it can be restored to its former glory, that keeps him squirreling away the scant few pounds he has left over at the end of every month in the hope that some day he might be able to save up enough that he can afford to do the degree he’d been planning on before Mum died.  
  
The one that tells him that this time, _this_ time, maybe he’ll do the right thing, say the right words – be the right person – to hold Francis’ interest once the initial rush of reunion wears off.  
  
With that thought, the dull pain in his stomach suddenly flares into a sharp spike that leaves him feeling queasy enough that he knows only a nice cup of tea will be able to set him to rights again, so he makes the trek back to the Costa Coffee he’d passed when he first went through the station’s ticket barriers.  
  
There’s a bewildering array of drinks on offer there, and Alasdair can’t help but feel that the bloke behind the counter’s cheerful smile slips a little – that he looks faintly surprised – when he orders a small English Breakfast instead of an… Espresso Doppio or some such.  
  
He tries not to balk too obviously at the price - £1.65, enough to pay for the pack of screws he needs to fix the section of fence the shed took down with it when it keeled over last week – even though he thinks it’s not worth half that because it tastes weak as shit even after he’s mashed the teabag against the side of the paper cup so hard that it almost bursts. He’s got fifty quid from his savings account in his wallet, after all; more than twice what he usually carries. It’s a special occasion; he can afford to splash out just a little.  
  
As he leaves the small shop, the tannoy announces that Chester station is sorry to inform him that ‘ _the 8:35 Virgin Trains service to London Euston is delayed by approximately ten minutes_ ’.  
  
He’s not sure whether to be relieved or annoyed that he’s apparently got even more time to kill.

 

* * *

  
  
The view from Arthur’s window at nine o’clock is almost identical to the view at eight. The old man has long since moved on, but he’s been replaced by a couple of teenagers who seem to be counting out large handfuls of change, likely trying to scrape together enough cash between them to buy a packet of cigarettes or cheap bottle of cider from the newsagents behind them. They look too young for either, scarcely any older than Arthur’s little brother, Michael (and the thought of him either smoking or drinking alcohol horrifies Arthur enough that he’s almost tempted to go outside and give the lads a good talking to).  
  
“Ten o’clock, Arthur,” Gabriela says before Arthur even finishes opening his mouth.  
  
Her book is open now at a graphic full-colour photograph of some poor soul with a horribly painful-looking, suppurating skin disease. It makes Arthur grimace in sympathetic pain, even though he’s at a comfortable distance and without his glasses, which renders a fortunate blur over all the finer details. Gabriela’s expression is completely serene, but then she probably sees far worse every day in A&E.  
  
“Why don’t you gone and make us some tea?” Gabriela continues, long fingers flicking to the next page in her book so there’s nothing to see but tightly-packed text once more. “It might help take your mind off things for a bit.”  
  
The suggestion’s unexpected – Arthur’s has had four cups already this morning; a rate of consumption that would usually earn him a concerned, doctorly lecture from his wife about the damage that level of caffeine intake might do to him in the long run if continued on a regular basis – but Arthur thinks it’s a good one, nevertheless.  
  
It’s difficult to dwell on less savoury matters when there’s the important business of proper brewing to concentrate on.  
  
The fact that Gabriela would probably appreciate a bit of a break from listening to him grumbling to himself and sighing isn’t lost on him, either.  
  
He heads towards the kitchen.  


 

* * *

  
  
The train has only reached Crewe, and Alasdair’s already regretting not splurging on a copy of _The Guardian_ along with his packet of Polos when he made his last minute dash into WHSmith’s.  
  
He’d found a copy of the previous day’s _Metro_ crumpled up underneath his seat, but reading it cover to cover took him less than twenty minutes, and whoever had discarded the paper had already completed the Sudoku puzzle. Not that Alasdair has got a pen on him, anyway.  
  
His mobile’s too ancient to have anything in the way of decent games, so Alasdair finds himself reduced to composing a long, involved text message to Dylan about nothing in particular, just to give himself something to do.  
  
He suspects it might be something of a mistake to let his mind be unoccupied right now.  
  
“Excuse me,” someone says, close to his left shoulder, quiet enough that they’re barely audible above the deep rumble the train makes as it pulls out of Crewe station.  
  
He looks up – a long, long way up – into a thin, pale face topped with an unruly shock of vivid red hair. A small smile spreads across the man’s narrow lips as Alasdair meets his eyes, which are a pale, watery blue, magnified to almost unnatural proportions by the thick lenses of his black-rimmed glasses.  
  
“Is this seat taken?” the man asks, gesturing towards the seat next to Alasdair’s own. His accent is Scottish, but beyond that, Alasdair can’t place it any more precisely than ‘not Glaswegian’, which is the only one he can identify with any certainty.  
  
“No, help yourself,” Alasdair tells him, although he longs to say otherwise, because there’s hardly enough room for his long legs and broad shoulders as it is, and the other man’s probably got half a foot on him.  
  
On the bright side, though, a spot of cramp would at least give him something different to worry about.

 

* * *

  
  
“Are you going to go and pick your brother up from the station?” Gabriela asks as the time slips perilously close to the dreaded hour of ten. “His train’ll be getting in soon, won’t it?”  
  
Arthur’s Bentley lives in a rented garage not too far away, and normally he’d relish any excuse to take her out for a spin (which are all too few, given the price of petrol and impenetrability of London traffic, which makes car travel somewhat slower than walking), but he knows his efforts would not be welcomed by Alasdair.  
  
“He’d just complain about the money I was wasting the whole time,” Arthur says. “We’ll both be happier if he takes the bus.”  
  
And, besides, Arthur doesn’t want to appear as though he’s encouraging his brother’s senseless behaviour in any way. He can hardly stop him coming to the flat, because even if Alasdair wasn’t pig-headedly stubborn and incapable of listening to reason, Gabriela has been just as delighted by the thought of his visit as she has that of their other imminent house-guest’s arrival – Arthur loves his wife more than life itself, but still can’t help but think she’s as misguided in her affections as her idiot brother – even knowing that having the two of them under the same roof is liable to end in disaster.  
  
They’ll be happy enough today, no doubt, all hands, smiles, and getting reacquainted after their two year long separation following Arthur and Gabriela’s wedding. By tomorrow, however, the limits of Francis’ ephemeral attention span will have been reached and he’ll make no attempt to disguise the fact that he’s on the lookout for pastures new, all of which will leave Alasdair, undoubtedly, in an even viler mood than usual.  
  
It’s small conciliation that Alasdair will be off home again on Sunday evening, because Arthur will still be stuck with Francis for what could be _weeks_ until he finds himself a place to live. Weeks of him looking down his pointy, supercilious nose at everything Arthur thinks, does and says.  
  
The prospect sends Arthur rushing back to the kettle once again.  


* * *

  
  
Quarter of an hour out from Crewe, Alasdair has not only learnt that his new seatmate is called James, but that he’s from Edinburgh, works in IT, and is going out with a woman who is apparently a goddess sent to earth (judging by the effusiveness of James’ comments about her, anyway).  
  
Usually, strangers don’t tend to strike up conversations with Alasdair – his face’s fault, according to Michael, though he’s never cared to elaborate any further than that – and, of late, he never talks to people he hasn’t spoken to hundreds, thousands, of times before. Beyond his siblings and Gabriela, the regulars he serves every night when he’s working at the pub and the few ageing villagers he does odd jobs for, round out his incredibly static social circle, and he’s starting to fear that he’s lost the knack for conversing with anyone he hasn’t already known for years.  
  
He can only smile and nod at appropriate intervals as James chatters on, the deep tenseness in his stomach returning with the dread that James might expect him to contribute at some point, because he hates where he lives, hates his job, and although he’s often wished otherwise, there’s never been a woman in his life, goddess or otherwise. It’s not something he usually dwells on overmuch, but hearing about the simple pleasures of James’ life has made him feel unexpectedly bitter – doubtless because he’s in exactly the wrong frame of mind and going to exactly the wrong place – and he’s afraid that he might not be able to stop that bitterness from being evident if he does speak, and he can’t bear the thought of being pitied in any way.  
  
“So, why are you off down to London, then?” James asks when he finally finishes singing Alison’s praises.  
  
“Going to see my boyfriend,” Alasdair says, half for the bittersweet pleasure of voicing that particular lie, and half in the hopes that James might be homophobic enough to not press for any further details about him afterwards. “He’s just moved there from Paris because he’s got himself a job as a sous-chef in some posh restaurant.”  
  
James’ broad smile and expressed interest in knowing more about this imaginary boyfriend quickly puts paid to that hope, but strangely, Alasdair finds that it feels more liberating than disappointing, because he _never_ gets to talk about Francis. His siblings all have no desire to hear about him, and there’s no-one else he’s close enough to want to tell, but something about knowing he’ll never meet this bloke again – that whatever he says will be of nothing more than mild interest and a brief diversion – frees his tongue.  
  
Not that he tells him the truth, mind. That he met Francis when he was on a family holiday when he was sixteen is the first and last completely genuine thing he says; the rest is just a fabrication, made up of everything he wishes weren’t lies.  


* * *

  
  
For all that he complains about never having any free time, Dylan actually conspires to have as little of it as possible in order to minimise how long he has to spend in his house.  
  
He joined a choir even though his voice passed its prime at the same time his testicles descended, joined a rugby team despite promising himself he’d never step foot on a pitch after leaving King’s School, and finds a million and one reasons to pop round to see if his elderly neighbour needs any little jobs doing, only in part because she makes the best chocolate cake he’s ever had the pleasure of eating.  
  
He just finds the house itself completely demoralising. He’d been able to get it for a lot less money than it was worth because it needed a ‘bit of modernisation’ as the ninety-year-old bloke who’d owned it before – and passed away in the master bedroom, though Dylan tries not to think about that too often or he’d never get any sleep – had seemingly not changed a thing about it since the sixties.  
  
The bathroom’s suite and tiles are the exact same shade of pale, pastel pink as Gaviscon – a mental association which always makes Dylan feel slightly queasy whenever he spends too long in the room – and the entire kitchen is a homage to faux wood, from the cracked veneer that covers the units to the peeling lino that is doing a very poor impression of stripped and polished floorboards.  
  
When he moved in, both bedrooms, the living room and the hall were decorated with wallpaper sporting a repeating pattern of huge, pale green and orange petalled flowers that clashed nicely with the bright red carpets, and he’d spent the first week of his residence gleefully stripping both out. But it soon transpired that doing DIY around his own house was just as tedious and back-breaking as it ever was at the manor – albeit on a much smaller scale – and his enthusiasm quickly petered away.  
  
Starting his new job provided a good excuse for rarely finding the occasion to do any work on the place, but its current state is hardly conducive to relaxation, either. He finds it hard to settle, because everywhere he looks he just sees jobs that need doing, and having to pick splinters out of his feet every time he forgets to wear his slippers hardly helps. Keeping himself occupied elsewhere as much as he can is far better for his blood pressure, he’s found.  
  
He’d awoken early this morning with a great sense of purpose, however. With Alasdair and Michael out of the picture for the weekend, and thus unlikely to impose any demands on his time, he could have an uninterrupted stretch of forty-eight whole hours to do with as he pleases; an unprecedented occurrence since the moment he moved back home after uni.  
  
He fetches his ladder and roller from the tiny shed in his backyard, digs out the eggshell blue paint from the pile of – unopened – tins in his spare bedroom, and then lugs them all into the living room, whereupon his motivation immediately evaporates.  
  
He’s grown so used to ignoring the state of the walls that he hadn’t noticed just how much work will need doing to them before he even thinks about painting. There are still shreds of wallpaper clinging on in several spots that will have to be scraped off before he starts, and numerous small holes in the plaster that will have to be filled, then, after the filler’s dried, sandpapered…  
  
He’ll make a start after a fortifying cup of tea and a biscuit.

 

* * *

  
  
One of the other drawbacks to seldom spending time at home is that Dylan frequently doesn’t notice when the small stocks of food he keeps in are getting low or about to go off.  
  
Upon the discovery that not only is he out of tea bags, but the two pint carton of milk in his fridge is busily and malodorously engaged in the process of turning into cottage cheese, he makes his third trip of the week to his nearest Tesco.  
  
Ever since the Kirkland family completed their long decline into pecuniary embarrassment, Alasdair had controlled the food budget with an iron fist. If it couldn’t be bought cheaper in bulk, with a money-off voucher, or BYGOF, they didn’t get to eat it. Thus Dylan always feels a tiny frisson of shame whenever he picks up anything that he doesn’t really need or is not currently on offer.  
  
It’s not enough to stop him from doing so, though. In fact, he takes a great deal of guilty satisfaction in slowly walking up and down every aisle instead of heading straight towards the things he needs, grabbing anything that catches his eye along the way. So into his basket goes not only his milk, but also a bag full of succulent-looking red grapes (they’ll probably go mouldy before he has chance to finish them, but he’ll certainly enjoy any he gets to eat before then), a bottle of white wine (priced at £8.99, and thus considerably less likely than his usual fare to taste like paint stripper), and a block of some fancy French cheese he’s never heard of before that he suspects will smell like diseased feet but taste divine.  
  
When he leaves the refrigerated section behind and turns onto the pasta aisle he sees something that stops him dead in his tracks: Lovino Vargas, in Dylan’s local Tesco, putting a packet of spaghetti into his trolley like he’s just some ordinary sort of bloke.  
  
It’s like spotting a rare orchid growing in the middle of a patch of potatoes, or a sleek panther prowling down Eastgate. Somehow, Dylan had always had a vague idea that men who looked like Lovino would never do anything as prosaic as grocery shopping; that they just lounged around looking dazzling on their down-time whilst only the more Dylan-like individuals of the world were the ones who did things like trudge around supermarkets and worry about what they were going to have for their dinner.  
  
What Lovino’s going to have for his dinner, it appears, is spaghetti bolognaise, judging by the jar of Dolmio sauce he picks up next. That, too, seems wrong – off-kilter – as Dylan would have expected Lovino to have inherited an ancient family recipe for the dish from his grandfather – one that called for vine-ripened tomatoes, fresh basil, and some secret ingredient that he was honour bound never to reveal to outsiders – and forever refuse to eat any lesser alternatives.  
  
Perhaps he does, as the jar is slammed back onto the shelf after he’s studied the label, and then he drags his trolley over to the other side of the aisle to turn his lingering scowl onto the selection of dried herbs.  
  
Dylan thinks he should either just continue on with his own shopping as though he’d never registered Lovino’s presence, or else go over and say a polite hello, fancy bumping into you here, but he finds that both options seem unappealing. Instead, he goes with creepy stalker option number three, which involves grabbing a box of lasagne sheets and pretending to be engrossed in reading the list of ingredients printed on the back whilst he is, in actuality, fixated on watching Lovino’s every move.  
  
Various containers of different types of herbs are picked out one by one from their tidy display rack and twirled around in Lovino’s long fingers – Dylan feels a ridiculous surge of envy towards those little tubs; he’s always suspected that Lovino’s hands are wonderfully soft – and his thin brows sink a little deeper over his fine, straight nose after he finds some fault in each one and consequently discards them. The bright overhead lights are as kind to him as the projector’s was in yesterday’s staff meeting, picking out warm red tones in his smooth hair and  –  
  
Dylan’s mobile trills loudly, and even though his hand flies quickly and instinctively to try and muffle it, he’s too late to stop the sound from attracting Lovino’s attention.  
  
Their eyes meet, and Lovino’s look even sharper and more disapproving than usual.  
  
The inside of Dylan’s mouth and throat seem to shrivel, suddenly desert-dry and inimicable to speech. He eventually manages to wheeze out a raspy, “Lovino,” but it doesn’t sound half as surprised as he wishes it did. Unlikely to be a convincing impression, he’s sure, of someone who’s only just noticed that an acquaintance of his is practically within arm’s reach.  
  
He receives a small grunt of acknowledgement, and then Lovino’s gaze drops to Dylan’s basket. Shockingly, the contents seem to pass muster, as Lovino’s eyebrows twitch their way upwards again, and a faint smile appears to tug briefly at the corners of his lips. They soon flatten out afterwards, however, as he inclines his head towards the pocket of Dylan’s coat which contains his treacherous mobile. “Aren’t you going to check your phone?” he asks.  
  
The question rankles slightly – because, really, what business is it of Lovino’s if he chooses to do so or not – but Dylan finds himself pulling out his phone, anyway, in what he can only imagine is a pathetic attempt to please the other man by being seen to follow his suggestion.  
  
He skims the text he’s been sent, but is unable to make much sense of it. “It’s from my brother, Alasdair,” he says, puzzling over the inclusion of a string of numbers followed by a random assortment of punctuation. “He seems to be angry about tea for some reason, but it’s quite hard to tell why. He’s not very good with texts; huge fingers and tiny keys are a bad combination.”  
  
When he lifts his head, Lovino’s attention seems to have drifted to have drifted to a point beyond Dylan’s shoulder, the tinned tomatoes apparently holding more interest than anything that Dylan might have to say.  
  
He doesn’t move on, though; staying rooted to the spot even after Dylan has lapsed once again into embarrassed silence, which makes Dylan feel as though he has to say something – anything – else if only to reward the other man’s patience.  
  
When he finally manages to drag a coherent sentence to the forefront of his mind, he spits it out as quickly as possible before it has chance to slink away to hide behind his better judgement again. “Are you here on your own?”  
  
He regrets each and every word the second that they leave his mouth, wanting to swallow them back up and not have them hanging heavily between him and Lovino, because they sound prying and intrusive even though he’d never intended them to be. Like he’s fishing for information about the private life Lovino has always seemed at pains to keep that way, given that he’s never so much as hinted at the existence of a significant other, either past or present.  
  
Lovino doesn’t seem unduly concerned by the question, however, giving a loose nod of his head before saying, “Feliciano’s gone off with Ludwig for the day.”  
  
The latter name is snarled with the usual amount of venom it’s imbued with when voiced in the same breath as Lovino’s brother’s. Dylan’s never quite had the courage to ask Lovino why that is, when, according to Feliciano, Ludwig is practically perfect in every way, and the two of them have been the best of friends since childhood.  
  
“My brothers are away for the weekend, too,” Dylan says, before belatedly realising that Lovino probably doesn’t give two shits what his family are up to. He only knows of Michael second-hand through Dylan’s stories – if that, as he seldom seems to pay much attention to them – and he and Alasdair seemed to take an instant dislike to one another on their sole meeting.  
  
Indeed, Lovino seems to have become entranced by the tomatoes again, and the feeling that he’s imposing on the other man’s time strikes Dylan again with redoubled force.  
  
“Anyway,” he says, popping the box of lasagne sheets into his basket because he thinks it would look strange to do anything else given how long he’s been clutching them now. “I’d best get going, so…”  
  
When he tries to ease away from Lovino, however, Lovino moves with him, and by the time Dylan has reached the end of the aisle, they’ve fallen into step with one another. Outlandishly – almost unbelievably – it seems as though Dylan will have company for the rest of his trip. He tests the impression by making a swift, unintuitive turn in the middle of the next aisle, and heading back towards the dairy section. Lovino stays at his shoulder the whole time.  
  
Unbelievable.  
  
He’s apparently happy to not say another word to Dylan, however, which makes the whole situation far less nerve-wracking than it could be, because Dylan’s very good at existing in the same space at Lovino, and looking whenever he has the opportunity, talking’s where it all falls apart.  


 

* * *

  
  
At ten o’clock precisely, a black cab pulls up to the kerb below Arthur’s flat and quickly disgorges Francis Bonnefoy along with a small retinue consisting of Gabriela’s brother Antonio and his girlfriend, Sofia.  
  
They take an inordinately long time to unpack Francis’ belongings from the back of the cab, various bags and boxes being piled onto the pavement, subsequently hefted for weight, and then passed around between the three of them until the optimum carrying capacity for each is reached. All this swapping and changing eventually results in Francis clutching the handles of two enormous suitcases, Antonio, a precariously stacked pile of cardboard boxes, and Sofia, what looks like a large hat box – though Arthur could be mistaken; for all Francis’ fashion oddities, he’s never seemed to be one for ostentatious headgear – under one arm, and a bulging canvas bag under the other.  
  
Arthur gains a certain amount of spiteful amusement from the fact that the cab’s meter has been running the entire time they’ve been faffing about with luggage, a feeling that only intensifies when it becomes clear that Antonio hadn’t considered the consequent increase in fare judging by the way he rears back from the cab’s window after talking to the driver. A rather intense conversation then appears to ensue between the three erstwhile passengers, presumably concerning how this slightly larger cost than expected will be split between them, and all the while, the meter will be ticking ever upwards.  
  
Gabriela’s hands slide low and warm around Arthur’s waist as she steps in close against his back, resting her chin against his shoulder as she too turns her attention to the scene below. The carefully distributed boxes and bags have been returned to the pavement again, whilst wallets, pockets and purse are rifled through, presumably to find sufficient change necessary to make up the difference in fare.    
  
“And here I thought you were smiling because you were happy,” Gabriela says.  
  
Arthur looks down her incredulously, but her, eyes, already tilted up towards him, are creased at their corners with amusement, and the pronounced curve of her cheek suggests she is smirking. She knows him too well.  
  
Outside, Sofia picks up the possible-hat box and seems to be aiming it at Antonio’s head.  
  
Gabriela huffs out a small waft of laughter, warm against the crook of Arthur’s neck, and says, “Maybe we should go out and help them.”  
  
Gabriela is dressed for a lazy day spent at home – a worn blue University of Durham T-shirt that used to be Arthur’s, the neck so stretched by age and repeated washing that it always slips down to reveal one of her shoulders, and grey pyjama shorts covered in sleepy pink kittens – and the morning looks as though it might be a slightly chilly beyond the centrally-heated bubble of their flat, given the clouds of white mist spilling out of Sofia, Antonio and Francis’ mouths as they argue.  
  
To save her the hassle of changing, Arthur – who is dressed in his usual day-wear of shirt and trousers, ready to make a quick getaway to any point that doesn’t contain Francis the second his company inevitably becomes to obnoxious to bear – insists on going alone.

 

* * *

 

  
The contested fare difference that seemed to have been causing so much debate is just three quid, which Arthur gladly pays himself, if only to get the entire ridiculous circus moving again instead of cluttering up the pavement and attracting far too much attention from curious passers-by. (He slips the cabbie an extra fiver, too, in mute consolation for having had to put up with the three idiots all the way from Antonio’s – one-bedroom, more’s the pity – flat in Shoreditch.)  
  
Antonio greets this small act of charity with gratitude so excruciatingly effusive that Arthur feels slightly embarrassed to be receiving it in public, Sofia looks faintly disgruntled (Arthur has long suspected that she thrives on arguments, however, so presumes she’s simply a little put out to have this particular one prematurely curtailed), and Francis approaches Arthur with wide-spread arms and a horrible glint in his eye that suggests he is planning on rubbing his stubbled face all over Arthur’s and slobbering on his cheeks.  
  
Arthur quickly bobs down and picks up the theoretical-hat box, holding it against his chest as he rises again to form a neat physical barrier against the threatened encroachment into his personal space. The box is heavier than he expected, however – unlikely, just as Arthur had presumed earlier, to actually contain a hat, unless it’s one made out of lead – meaning that his arms sag sufficiently under its weight to allow a small window of opportunity.  
  
One that Francis gleefully exploits, clutching hold of Arthur’s shoulders with his long, narrow hands and rising up onto the tips of his toes in order to lean in close enough to plant the kisses Arthur had been dreading. They’re less extravagant than he’d feared, though; just brief, dry brushes of Francis’ lips before he sinks back down onto the flats of his feet to treat Arthur to the sort of wide, dazzling smile that would be better suited to a close friend who has been well-missed, rather than… whatever it is they are.  
  
“It’s good to see you, Arthur,” he says, pronouncing the name closer to the French Ar-TUYR, even though his accent whilst speaking English seems lighter now than Arthur remembers it ever having been in the past. “It’s been far too long since I last had the pleasure of your company.”  
  
Arthur doesn’t remember that particular interaction with the other man being a pleasure in any way, shape or form.  
  
He and Gabriela had had a relatively small wedding – thirty guests, ceremony in Chester register office, and dinner in a nice but inexpensive restaurant afterwards – because they were both fresh out of uni and almost flat broke, and neither Arthur’s family nor Gabriela’s could afford to chip in much beyond their time and hard work. (Dylan had made a cake, which was unexpectedly delicious, and Michael and Alasdair had hand-made invitations which were so hideous that they somehow looped all the way through the taste barrier, emerging, equally unexpectedly, on the side of ‘charmingly eccentric’.)  
  
Arthur had loved every moment of it, save for the ever-present sneer on Francis’ face. Although he’d never actually said anything disparaging – at least, not within Arthur’s earshot – that expression had spoken volumes enough about his dissatisfaction with every aspect of the day, from Gabriela’s second-hand dress all the way on down to the lumpy icing on Dylan’s cake.  
  
Arthur had only managed to refrain from punching him because he’d promised himself he wouldn’t do anything that might risk ruining Gabriela’s day.  
  
“Hmm,” he says noncommittally before swivelling on his heel and heading back towards the flat.  


 

* * *

  
  
The kisses Francis’ presses to Gabriela’s cheeks are much more lingering, and the smile he bestows on her afterwards even broader than the one he offered Arthur.  
  
“Gabriela,” he says, rolling the ‘r’ for so long that it sounds almost obscene. “You look…” Here he pauses, as his ever-critical eyes roam from the top of Gabriela’s head (long, dark hair pulled back into a messy ponytail) to the tips of her bare feet (nails painted for a party they attended a couple of nights ago, polish now heavily chipped). “Well,” he finishes, smile flattening into something that seems far less genuine.  
  
Arthur wants to grab Francis by the lapels of his no doubt ridiculously expensive grey jacket and haul him straight back out of the flat and deposit him on the street, because how _dare_ he look at Gabriela like that? They’ve been good enough to open their home to him, and he still can’t restrain himself from being judgemental about one of his fucking _hosts_ for as long as it takes him to drag his skinny arse over their threshold? A host who, in Arthur’s humble opinion, who never looks anything other than stunning whatever she wears or however she styles her hair, and can, at the end of the day, surely be forgiven for being a little less than perfectly put together on one of her rare days off from _saving_ sodding _lives_ in A &E.  
  
Gabriela is a far better person than Arthur, however, and doesn’t knee Francis in the bollocks like he so clearly deserves. Instead, she returns Francis’ once-over with a slow, appraising survey of her own, and then happily pronounces that he looks, ‘Fantastic.’  
  
Up until that moment, Arthur hadn’t really seen Francis as anything other than an annoying and unwelcome blur, the details lost to his own annoyance and disinterest in paying anything other than the bare minimum of attention to the other man. The certainty in Gabriela’s tone makes him take a longer look at Francis, however; trying to see what she sees.  
  
Francis’ dark grey trousers and light blue shirt are as tight as his clothes have always been, fitting snugly enough to the contours of his body, in fact, that Arthur would guess that they have been specifically tailored for him rather than bought off a rack. His blond hair seems to be a touch brighter than when Arthur last saw him – doubtless dyed – and falls in soft waves around a face that has grown a little gaunter in the intervening two years, the high cheekbones now even more pronounced. It is, Arthur supposes, a handsome face, but only if one is capable of seeing past the aura of entitled self-satisfaction that seems to exude from the man’s pores, which is usually the only thing Arthur perceives.  
  
The sound of Sofia’s voice drifting up from the stairwell behind Francis – telling them to shift their arses before she drops Francis’ suitcase over the banister – distracts Arthur from his scrutiny, and reminds him that he was supposed to be on the way to the kitchen to make everyone a revitalising cup of tea to help them recuperate from their travails thus far.  


 

* * *

  
  
  
After a refreshing cup of tea and cake viewing – only Gabriela seemed to have worked up enough of an appetite to want a slice of the carrot cake Arthur had baked the night before, and even she could only manage a few mouthfuls – Sofia and Antonio make good their escape, leaving Arthur to deal with Francis alone whilst Gabriela goes to ‘freshen up and get changed’.  
  
(That snide little ‘well’ had seemingly cut her more deeply than she had let on. Arthur had thought his dislike of Francis was complete, but unexpectedly finds there’s still room left for yet more.)  
  
He shows Francis to the spare bedroom in which he will be staying first, in the hopes that it will encourage the other man to begin his unpacking and thus keep himself occupied for what remains of the morning, if not the rest of the day.  
  
The room is quite long but narrow, with one tiny window at the far end, which looks out onto the building’s postage-stamp-sized yard, home to one yellowing shrub in a cracked terracotta pot and Gary from the ground floor flat’s bike. Its carpet and wallpaper are both cream with a repeating pattern of tiny pink flowers, dense enough that they tend to make Arthur’s eyes a little blurred if he stares at them too long. He and Gabriela had tentatively floated the idea of redecorating to their landlord, but he’d reacted with horror more equal to a suggestion that he carve off his own nose to present to them.  
  
There’s a small dresser underneath the window, a huge wardrobe constructed from what looks like half a tree on the wall opposite, and only enough floor space remaining between the two for a pine-framed single bed and matching bedside table.  
Francis’ carefully sculpted eyebrows creep steadily upwards when he spots the bed, whilst his bottom jaw falls steadily down. “It’s very small,” he says eventually, when the brunt of his dismay has apparently passed.  
  
Francis has about two inches of height on Arthur, though Arthur suspects the majority of that is shoe. “You’re not very big,” he says. Then, allowing a note of warning to creep into his voice, adds, “And you’re not going to be doing anything in it besides sleeping, anyway.”  
  
Arthur has no concrete proof that Francis’ love life is a non-stop sexual cavalcade featuring a revolving cast of thousands, but given the man’s tendency to flirt with any person who stands still long enough and blatantly undress them with his eyes, it seems more likely than not. Arthur wants to nip that sort of thing before it even starts to bud, not least because the flat’s walls are made of little better than cardboard.    
  
Francis' mouth kinks up at one corner, and his eyes narrow slyly. “Gabriela mentioned that Alasdair was visiting this weekend…”  
  
He trails into a horrible, loaded sort of silence, that’s obviously meant to lead Arthur towards mentally filling it with all manner of unpleasant images starring that bed and his brother in leading roles. Arthur resolutely thinks of Francis and Alasdair sitting there drinking tea and talking quietly about the weather instead, partly out of spite, but mainly for reasons of not wanting to sully his brain yet further.  
  
“That doesn’t change anything,” Arthur says, flinging the box he was carrying to the floor, and then stomping out of the room before Francis can berate him for not treating his possessions with greater care as his anguished expression is promising.  


 

* * *

  
  
  
“And this is the bathroom,” Arthur says as he swings open the room’s door.  
  
It’s the final stop on the tour of the flat, one that has taken less than five minutes due to the flat’s small size and the exclusion of Gabriela and Arthur’s bedroom, skipped because Arthur didn’t care to hear Francis’ opinion on it, especially after hearing that their kitchen was ‘cramped’ and ‘too dark, and the little storage room (barely more than a cupboard, really) off the hall was ‘badly organised’.  
  
Francis pokes his head inside the room, and Arthur can tell by the sharp inhalation he drags in through flared nostrils that he’s not impressed, even before he starts speaking.  
  
“You don’t have a bath,” he says, in a nasal, whining tone that sets Arthur’s teeth on edge.  
  
He really doesn’t know what sort of palatial surroundings Francis was expecting. The flat may be slightly poky, but a PhD stipend and newly qualified nurse’s salary don’t exactly stretch far in London.  He doesn’t think sous chefs are paid particularly well, either, so doubts Francis was exactly living in the lap of luxury himself back in Paris, especially as he seems to spend so much money on his clothes.  
  
Besides, seeing as though he’s getting himself the use of a perfectly serviceable bedroom and amenities for nothing more than a fair share of the housework and chipping in with the grocery bills – their landlord has much the same opinion towards sub-letting as he does plain wallpaper – Arthur thinks it’s pretty bloody rich of him to be looking such a generous gift horse in the mouth.  
  
“Well, then you won’t want to waste any time finding yourself a place that does, will you,” he says.

 

* * *

 

 

Once Francis has finished disparaging the bathroom, they return to the living room to discover Gabriela’s had the kettle on again.

She’s made herself and Francis a coffee – something she usually only ever imbibes at work, as the smell of the stuff makes Arthur feel a little nauseated – and although Francis accepts it with a smile, the slight wrinkling of his nose when he takes his first sip suggests he doesn’t much care for the taste of Nescafe.

Arthur sits on the armchair to drink his tea, leaving the two of them and their coffee stink to spread out across the sofa, and Francis immediately starts speaking to Gabriela in French, effectively cutting Arthur out of the conversation.

French was Arthur’s worst subject at school, and the one GCSE he had failed. That shaky foundation has eroded pretty badly since then, and he can only sit and watch, nursing his mug against his chest as it cools, whilst Gabriela and Francis chatter on, speaking far too quickly for him to keep up.  
   
He remembers enough of the language to recognise the ‘ _marié_ ’ when Francis says it some time later, however, and also ‘ _trop jeune_ ’. The faintly pitying look that accompanies the words transcends the language barrier, and makes Arthur want to strangle Francis with his ridiculously shiny hair.

For the sake of the continued good health of both his marriage and Francis, he decides it’s probably best to remove himself from the temptation before it gets overwhelming.

He jumps to his feet, and has grabbed his coat and keys before Gabriela has chance call out and ask where he’s going.

“Just need a breath of fresh air,” he calls back over his shoulder without slowing.

He hopes she thinks he just wants to get away from the scent of coffee.

 

 

* * *

 

When he left the flat, Arthur had the vague intention of wandering around his neighbourhood until such time as his hands stopped itching with the need to do physical harm to his new houseguest.

Instead, he finds himself wandering into the newsagents to buy a lighter and packet of cigarettes, even though he hasn’t smoked in three years.

He feels immediately guilty afterwards, because he and Gabriela had quit together, each promising the other that this was it, that they’d never light another in their lives. As far as he’s aware, Gabriela has kept her promise, but Arthur knew the second that the packet was in his hand that he was going to renege on it. The craving is suddenly as overwhelming as he’d feared the need to inflict damage upon Francis would become.

Upon leaving the shop, he quickly ducks around to the small car park behind it because he knows he won’t be spotted there, even if Gabriela does happen to look out of one of the flat’s windows. It feels a little like being a teenager again, when Granddad first fell ill and he, Dylan and Alasdair would sneak off to smoke behind the old gatehouse, trying to hide it from their mum.

The first drag of his first cigarette burns his throat, the second makes him cough, but the third and the fourth feel natural, a rhythm still ingrained in his hand and lungs.

Halfway through his third cigarette, Gabriela rings his mobile, wanting to know if he’s heard from Alasdair, as Francis is about to start cooking lunch and needs to know if he’ll be feeding three or four.

Arthur checks his watch. It’s nearly half past twelve, which means that Alasdair’s train should have arrived in London nearly two hours ago.

“I’ll give him a call and check,” Arthur tells Gabriela. “His train was probably just delayed.”

 

* * *

 

Alasdair’s train was delayed, it transpires, but only by twenty minutes. He’s spent the last hour or so in the Wheatsheaf, however, a pub only a couple of streets away from Arthur’s flat.

He sounds reluctant to leave it – refuses to, in fact – so Arthur sets off to drag him out of it, even though he’s not exactly eager to do so. He reasons, however, that Alasdair will likely want to take Francis off out somewhere they can get a little privacy, then, with any luck, they’ll get themselves lost in the unfamiliar city, never to return.

When Arthur does arrive at the pub, Alasdair is strangely hard to find for a six foot two block of pure muscle. Then again, he does seem to have taken some pains to hide himself away as best he can, seating himself in furthest corner from both the front door and the bar, at a table that’s flanked on one side by a high wooden partition and a huge old-fashioned juke box on the other.

He’s dressed in what Arthur knows to be his best casual clothes – the jeans with only one creosote stain besmirching the denim, and his least frayed T-shirt – and his one good jacket is draped over the back of his chair. His russet hair even looks like it might have been brushed at some point in recent memory; a state Arthur knows is only achieved by a great deal of sweat and determination.

There’s an empty pint glass on the table in front of him, and he’s staring into the depths of the half-empty one in his hand with such intense focus that he doesn’t seem to notice Arthur’s arrival until he sits down on the table’s only other chair.

Alasdair blinks at him slowly then, a faint frown forming on his brow. “What are you doing here?” he asks, his voice much diminished from its usual, booming tone, sounding slightly thin and raspy.

“I’ve come to collect you,” Arthur says.

The frown deepens. “I’ve already told you I don’t want to go.”

Arthur very much doubts that, considering the alacrity with which Alasdair had purchased his train ticket to London once he discovered Francis’ current whereabouts last week. The same alacrity he always demonstrates whenever the chance arises to spend some time in Francis’ company.

For some reason, however, he seems unwilling to take the last step of his journey. “Why don’t you go home, then?” Arthur asks.

Although he’d be happy for Alasdair to whisk Francis away and out of his own hair, it’s really just making the best out of a bad situation. What he’d really like his brother to do is just forget the whole thing and sod back off up to Chester again without coming into contact with Francis at all. Alasdair’s visits with Francis are always brief and apparently unsatisfactory, leaving him even more irritable than usual for many weeks afterwards. This inevitable dip in mood will doubtless result in Arthur being bombarded with endless complaints from Michael and Dylan as they suffer the fallout from it; a headache he’d much rather avoid.

One of Alasdair’s huge shoulders hitches up momentarily, and he shakes his head. “Can’t,” he says quietly, and Arthur thinks it’s unlikely to be because he’s worried that he won’t be able to transfer his return ticket.

Alasdair’s whole body seems to collapse in on itself, then; back bowing and head drooping down as he hunches himself over his unfinished pint. He looks, Arthur realises with a sudden jolt of surprise, pathetic.

Arthur had spent much of his life thinking of his brother as some sort of ogre, because he played far too rough when they were children and had no sympathy for tears, and then, after their mum died, he tried – and sometimes succeeded by sheer force of will – to dictate every step of Arthur’s life like some drill sergeant mad with power, but still the thought follows that Alasdair doesn’t just look pathetic, he IS pretty pathetic.

He’s nearly twenty-eight years old, and his life is practically identical to how it was when he was nineteen. Most of his friends from his year at King’s School have gone on to get degrees and careers, travel the world, start businesses or families, or simply just moved forward and left their teenage self behind. Alasdair is still working the same dead end job he has hated for the last ten years, still wasting every moment of his meagre spare time trying to salvage some shitheap that eats money and then craps out even bigger problems, still, as he always has been, single and apparently hating it.

Arthur knows from observation that there wasn’t anyone in his brother’s life romantically between the end of that ill-starred holiday to France and Arthur’s leaving for uni six years later, and all reports from Michael and Dylan seem to suggest there’s been no-one since then, either. No-one but Francis, anyway, whenever he sees fit to flit back into Alasdair’s life briefly, which generally seems to occur every second year or so.

Dylan had confided to Arthur one drunken night that he thinks Francis’ inconsistency accounts for half of his pull for Alasdair. All the anticipation leading up to their infrequent meetings and the intensity caused by their short duration presumably brings a bit of excitement, a tiny but bright spark, into a life that is otherwise relentlessly humdrum.

Remembering that conversation, Arthur feels an unaccustomed sharp pang of sympathy for his brother. It makes him offer the lie: “Francis is making your favourite dish for lunch right now, you know.”

Arthur hopes Alasdair doesn’t ask for clarification, as he hasn’t the faintest clue what that imaginary dish might be.

Alasdair doesn’t ask, though. He looks up towards Arthur and the small smile that twitches at the corners of his lips looks tremulous, but also a little pleased; a little hopeful. “Really?”

Arthur has never seen anything even close to that smile – or the emotions it seems to represent – gracing his brother’s face before. The sight makes him feel simultaneously relieved and guilty.

Guilty or not, he still nods his head, confirming the lie.

When he gets up from his seat, Alasdair follows him.


	4. Chapter 4

The morning meeting is half over, and Llewellyn is diligently taking notes about all the little updates that have happened. Bus passes are still being fought about so he’s to find out each child in need of one and write up a temporary one for them, and the lights in the cafeteria are being worked on, but should be fixed by lunchtime, lunch coupons are to be have his initials on them so old ones from last year can’t be recycled and the detention forms have a new layout.  
  
He just about gets ready to ask about the use of the photocopier – he’s in need of spare papers for his first real lesson – but has no idea how to activate his credits.  
  
Just as he opens his mouth the door to the meeting room is opened and a slim woman with long blonde curls swans in, a bright smile on her face, ignoring the way everyone in the room looks at her, faces dripping with incredulity like melt water off large icicles in the oncoming warmth of spring.  
  
“Good morning, everyone,” she says, striding over and setting a large bag on the table.  
  
“Miss Labelle,” Mr Beilschmidt says, like he’s trying to sound even more threatening than usual.  
  
The woman merely bats her big blue eyes at him before getting back to work with her digging. “Bonjour, Ludwig.”  
  
“You’re late,” Mr Beilschmidt says, looking pointedly towards Lovino, Jakub and finally to Llewellyn himself, as the three of them arrived late <again. This time, Lovino was the last to show up, stinking of tobacco and hellfire because apparently something had happened the previous night that caused him to become unhinged.  
  
“But you’re so good at running these meetings and I had trouble with my straighteners.” Miss Labelle pouts towards him then points to her hair as if something is terribly wrong with it, but it falls into thick wavy curls that glisten in such a way that even Llewellyn can’t help admiring despite his disinterest in women of any shape.  
  
“You can’t just waft in here like this,” Mr Beilschmidt tries to argue, but the slip of a woman appears to be more brick than human being, merely agreeing before pulling some form of gift.  
  
“Calm down Ludwig, I read everything you emailed me last night and I updated all the old files you were going to do this evening.” She then wiggles what looks like a mug. “Look, I got you this while I was at the Eiffel tower.”  
  
“Thank you.” Mr Beilschmidt appears to be torn between his gratitude and his anger, yet his inability to focus on one renders him merely indifferent. “You will attempt to be on time tomorrow?”  
  
“Of course.” Miss Labelle pulls a little snow globe from her large travel bag – which has an embroidered ‘J’adore Paris’ on the side; the i dotted with a little red heart – and studies it with what looks like confusion.  
  
This apparently prompts a large measure of sarcastic agreement around the room before Miss Labelle strides around the table and hands the little snow globe to Feliciano.  
  
“I got you this, Feli, my love,” she says sweetly, pressing the snow globe into his eager hands. It appears to be a small building of some kind, the white speckles contained within the snow globe getting a good swirl as Feliciano shakes it.  
  
“Gracias!” he chimes, like a small child who’s just been given something he’s always wanted. “But what is it?”  
  
“It’s the Arc de Triomphe.”  
  
Judging by the slight accent the woman has and the finely cut – expensive – suit she’s wearing, Llewellyn assumes she must be French, or at least enthralled by the culture. She trots back to her bag and enthusiastically plucks a book from it, extending it out to Jakub, who looks more delighted by this than anything else anyone has done for him previously.  
  
“That is a book about the French Revolution; it is also signed by the author.”  
  
“Thank you, Miss Labelle, I love it.” Jakub sounds sincere and immediately flicks the book open, a mass of brightly coloured pictures and minute text stealing the man’s attention.  
  
The gift giving continues, with the young lady PE teacher receiving a high-end looking barrette, which is slid into her headband with a thankful squeak, Alfred obtaining several boxes of what appear to be French sweets, and a bottle of wine which is apparently for everyone to celebrate her glorious return after work is over, regardless of how early their start will be tomorrow.  
  
Eventually she arrives at Lovino, her smile turning so sweet as to be sickly. The sort one puts on merely to annoy those who hate the sight of you, she then extends out an insignificant looking pen.  
  
“Por vous.” Then she waits, enjoying the ugly sneer that Lovino wears; the most intense one he’s given to anybody thus far.  
  
He takes a hold and his face wrinkles, probably finding something about the pen to be less than his high standards demand.  
  
“You shouldn’t have.” The pen gets angled slightly, suggesting he’s been given some silly, novelty thing in which a little boat sails up and down the end of it.  
  
Finally, as if in complete afterthought, Miss Labelle sees fit to turn her attention towards Dylan, her smile soft and placid as she removes a box from her bag and eases it into his grasp.  
  
“This is for you, mon petite pomme,” she says, and then brushes a wrinkle from her short skirt, flicking it around in such a way that her curls swish around her shoulders and a waft of her perfume fills the air. “It is to help you with your…” She makes some general motion towards what appears to be the entirety of Dylan.  
  
Which seems a little rude, and incredibly uncharitable.  
  
“And of course I couldn’t forget about…” When Miss Labelle locks eyes with Llewellyn they instantly glaze over, as if the sight of him has clashed with her perception of things. She turns her attention to Mr Beilschmidt. “Where is Mrs Terwilliger?”  
  
“If you had been here when you were supposed to be you’d know she retired.” Mr Beilschmidt looks up from the study of his mug, which he appears to be rather taken with, choosing to merely frown gently at the woman where anyone else might have long earned a deep menacing scowl. “Mr Walsh is her replacement.”  
  
This doesn’t appear to please the flowery scented lady as her eyes skim back towards Llewellyn, taking him in as if memorising each little thing about him that could be improved upon. “This is no good, Ludwig,” she says, almost hissing between her pearly white teeth. “Who am I supposed to give this to?”  
  
She holds up another box, nearly identical to the one given to Dylan, but a little bigger and topped with a smaller ribbon. While Dylan’s is a deep calming blue shade with a darker blue bow, this second box is a feminine baby pink, topped with a glittering silver ribbon.  
  
“I suppose you could always give it to Mr Walsh,” Mr Beilschmidt mutters, looking back to his new mug and shrugging.  
  
This seems to please the lady as she strides confidently over to him, and offers the box out.  
  
“Nice to meet you…” She pauses, an expectant wrinkle developing at the corner of her mouth, her smile almost glossing over the calculating little run of her eyes, as she studies his dark green jumper and brown tie.  
  
“Llewellyn.” He takes the item, setting it aside and offering his hand out for her to shake, taking in the way she’s dressed – almost perfectly arranged in every way, her shirt and jacket showing off just enough of her bosom without overdoing it, her clear nail polish emphasising the natural white skin of her hands and a touch of pink makeup to add a youthful blush to her face. “Nice to meet you, Miss…”  
  
“Alaina,” she announces, every inch of her proud. Even the little red flower that adorns her hair looks self satisfied. “Alaina Labelle.” She then turns on her heel and lifts her bag, striding towards the coffee maker and getting to work popping it on.  
  
Mr Beilschmidt seems to drift back to reality when the scent of coffee hits him. “Right, is that everything?”  
  
A disinterested ring to the affirmative is chimed, and Mr Beilschmidt immediately stands up, dismissing them all silently.  
  
“What on earth is in that box?” Feliciano asks Dylan, looking wide eyed and curious about the mystery.  
  
Dylan however flushes slightly before admitting: “Skin care products, and a bottle of massage oil.” He rotates the box quizzically, as if it might be withholding some hidden secret. “I’m not really sure I’ll have any use for it.” He then turns towards Llewellyn, eyebrows rising as he almost longs for something unspoken. “What about yours?”  
  
Llewellyn quickly lifts the – embarrassingly pink – box and studies the label, feeling his whole face screwing up like a spent tissue as he does so.  
  
“Looks like some kind of footcare kit.” He holds the box aloft, sensing that he and Dylan are having a similar quandary; the quandary of a gift they have no need for yet no ability to rid themselves of. He instead chooses to change the subject. “By the way, Dylan,” He says, earning both Dylan and Feliciano’s full attention. “How did the home improvement’s go?”  
  
A thin thread of confusion starts to sew a look of bemusement into Dylan’s soft features, first looking suspicious as if suspecting Llewellyn of some form of subterfuge before his memory of their quick, unmemorable talk in the bar wanders back to him like a fat lazy bulldog. “Oh, it was okay.” Dylan shrugs, turning to Feliciano to add some confirmation. “Michael’s ceiling finally gave in.”  
  
“Is he alright?” Feliciano asks, pitch rising in overdramatic concern, his arms starting to waggle slightly.  
  
“Well it didn’t stop him from complaining, so I assume he’s none the worse for wear.” A gentle shrug and a snort of laughter helps expel the idea that anybody was badly hurt. “At least until he stole Aly’s Wotsits.”

 

* * *

 

 

  
Dylan has often thought that there must be some flaw in the Kirkland genetics that only manifests itself with puberty.

He has been informed by various sources – both incredibly biased and approaching neutral – that he and his siblings were all adorable as children, and if approached with a detached eye, family photographs seem to bear out that proposition. However, one by one, as they reached the fateful age of thirteen, the Kirkland curse kicked in.

Alasdair – then Michael after him – shot up in height but left every single spare ounce of flesh behind him, and until he finally started bulking up again at sixteen, seemed to be comprised chiefly of scrawny limbs; gangling and uncoordinated. Arthur’s features suddenly appeared over-large on his face – earning him the nickname ‘Potato Head’ from Alasdair, which stuck throughout his teenage years – and he sprouted a fresh crop of spots almost daily, as did Caitlin.

Dylan, however, hit the dubious adolescent jackpot: failing to shed any of the weight that his mum had reassured him for years was just puppy fat, skin erupting and hair mutating from the cherubic curls of his childhood to some strange amalgam of greasy and dry that meant that it always looked unwashed whilst simultaneously frizzing out to enormous proportions, giving him the perpetual appearance of someone who’d stuck their finger in a plug socket.

The growth spurt he was promised was slow in coming, too, only deigning to show up when he started sixth form following years of embarrassment over being the shortest boy in his class by a sizeable margin. Even then, it wasn’t much of a growth spurt, quickly fizzling out to leave him a fairly unimpressive five foot seven and a bit (rounded up to five eight for simplicity’s – and his ego’s – sake).

He’d hardly emerged like some magnificent butterfly from an unsightly cocoon by the time he went off to university, but he had at least poked out a leg and maybe a feeler or two.

Before then, he’d had only been on the yearning side of countless unreciprocated crushes, and had fallen in love twice and rejected once after nervously declaring his feelings (he hadn’t even bothered to try with Declan Roberts, who he was fairly certain would punch him in the face rather than just laugh in it, as Laura Jackson had done), and thus been amazed when Cerys Powell approached HIM during his third week at Warwick.

Even she had hardly seemed bowled over by the strength of his raw animal magnetism, however; her most common compliments throughout their relationship regarding his level of attractiveness being that he had a ‘pleasant face’, ‘looked kind’ and, occasionally, was ‘cute’ (a description Dylan supposed should perhaps feel somewhat insulting to his masculinity, but as it was such a vast improvement on Laura Jackson’s ‘hideous’, was one that he derived just as much appreciation from as Cerys doubtless intended).

Now, at twenty-four, he still carries a bit of extra weight on his stomach and cheeks – arse, too, if Alasdair and Michael’s comments are anything to go by – his face sports just as many freckles as it once had spots, and has grown relatively comfortable with the fact that he’ll never be tall, dark and handsome, but ‘pleasant’ at best.

This equanimity has mostly come about by simply not thinking about his actual appearance at all, looking _past_ his face in the mirror rather than at it and then pretending to himself that he is actually tall, dark and handsome – a deception that can sometimes be a little hard to sell to himself, given that his best friend and most frequent companion HAS grown up to be the very epitome of that cliché; looking like some film star turned body builder, albeit one who inexplicably eschews hair care and does all his clothes shopping at Oxfam – in the hope that he will somehow then exude all the confidence he lacks in actuality.

It’s a fragile charade, one that doesn’t stand up to either close scrutiny on his part or the intrusion of others. Thus, he finds himself wandering out of the staff room clutching the box Alaina had gifted him to his chest, feeling as though he should probably go and find a paper bag to put over his head.

He tries to tell himself that she perhaps had simply noticed that he has patches of dry skin below his eyes, or that his cuticles are always ragged thanks to his bad habit of unthinkingly gnawing on his nails and the tips of his fingers whenever he’s anxious (or simply a little too distracted or bored).

The look she’d given him hadn’t been one of someone commiserating over tiny imperfections of that sort, however, but of someone pitying him for having to go out into the world looking the way nature (and questionable genetics) had built him. Her all-encompassing gesture and pointed comment – all the more damning for the way it trailed into silence, as though she was incapable of even finding the words to describe the true horror of what she saw before her – had simply destroyed what little ambiguity remained.

It isn’t the first time Alaina has made it clear she finds fault with him, and he sincerely doubts that it’ll be the last. On his very first day, she’d visibly recoiled from the pattern on his tie, and on the second, pulled him aside to gently inform him that the cut of his one and only good suit wasn’t very flattering for someone with his… figure (the pause was accompanied a sad shake of her head and his first exposure to the lamenting expression he’s since become very familiar with).

Her priority the previous year, however, had apparently been an attempt to improve his hair. She’d clucked over the length of it (slightly longer than was perhaps professional), despaired over the colour (dull, mousey brown) and slipped him so many business cards for barbers  who could supposedly ‘work wonders’ that their sheer mass had ripped the little pocket in his wallet that he’d kept shoving them into to show willing.

Eventually, he’d had to threaten to bring in a note from his own barber, excusing him from ever having a different style because his current one was the result of many years of trial and error and the only one thus far to keep his hair at a reasonable volume. She’d backed down after that, but she was simply strategising, Dylan suspects; planning this year’s line of attack, which was likely ‘do something about Dylan’s poor face’.

It’s hard not to take it personally, but Dylan knows he probably shouldn’t as it’s really just Alaina’s way. She seemingly has a relentless drive to try and improve other people, push them to be the best they can be; a quality which, when devoted to matters such as her pupils’ academic achievements, contributes to her excellence as a teacher, but can be soul-crushing when applied to more personal failings.

At least Dylan can take heart that he’s not alone, as she always has plenty to say about Ludwig’s entire wardrobe, for example, or Emma’s choice of make-up. Even Lovino isn’t immune to criticism, her most common refrain where he’s concerned being that he would be ‘even more handsome if he smiled once in a while’.

The thought seems to summon the man in question, who stomps over to Dylan’s side in order, it appears, to take a closer look at the present Alaina had given him.

Far too close for Dylan’s liking, as he can feel the heat of Lovino’s body seeping through his expensive suit, warming his side as the other man leans into him to better see over his shoulder, and smell what he can only presume is some equally expensive aftershave. Something sharp, spicy, and infinitely more aromatic than the Old Spice Dylan himself is wearing (a present from his Great-Aunt which had lived untouched at the back of his bathroom cabinet since last Christmas and only pressed into recent service out of desperation and a lack of alternatives).

Heat and scent combine into a heady enough mixture that Dylan can’t summon the presence of mind to mount an objection when Lovino plucks the blue box out of his hand with a derisive, “What crap did she buy you, then?”

By which time it’s too late, as Lovino makes short work of popping off the box’s lid and peering inside at its contents. Dylan looks down at his shoes so he doesn’t have to see whether or not Lovino’s expression becomes approving once he sees the array of beautifying products Alaina has selected for Dylan’s use.

He can hear the various tubes and bottles rattling together as Lovino rifles through them, and the occasional soft exhalation signifying what he guesses is either amusement or exasperation, and then, finally, “Jesus Christ.”

The words are both sharp and loud enough to shock Dylan into raising his head again; turning it to see Lovino holding aloft a small bottle of massage oil and wearing a faintly disgusted expression. “What the fuck do you think she’s trying to tell you with _this_?” he says, and the slight blush of colour that kisses his cheeks is answer enough regarding what Lovino, at least, presumes Alaina’s message is intended to be.

Which is ridiculous, as Alaina is just as far out of Dylan’s league as Lovino himself; far enough that they might as well be living on another plane of existence entirely.

Dylan shrugs. “It probably just came as part of the set or something,” he says.

 

* * *

 

Oliver’s walk to school is punctuated – as it sometimes is, depending on which of their brothers they’re staying with – with a meeting with Michael. He greets the other teenager as he normally does, with a firm kick to the back of the leg and a small – almost reluctant – bumping of fists before Michael drifts off into his own little world. Their journey to the inside of the building a shared silence.

Michael yawns widely, and it slowly makes Oliver need to as well. His mouth forces itself open and the deep inhale washes through his system, huffing out with a strangely satisfying tingle through his body.

“How was your weekend?” Oliver asks to cut through the tedium of their walk to the form room, which resides in one of the most secluded areas of the building.

They pass through the double doors that Michael opens with a gentle push from his foot, as using his hands would simple take too much effort. “You don’t want to know.” It’s a phrase they use often, demanding not to be enquired about further.

The small trailer they arrive at resides in the middle of the wide courtyard. It obscures the view from the music room and guards the entrance to the tarmac playing ground, which is surrounded by a high chain-link fence.

It always makes Oliver feel like a prisoner, which is fitting really, seeing as escape is nigh impossible and he’d have no home to return to if he did.

“Same.” Oliver shrugs and his hand connects with the handle of their form room door, but it doesn’t budge even when he jiggles it. “I guess Mr Foopershooter isn’t here yet.”

Michael smirks at the use of the name – which changes every time because it’s a stupid name and should likely be changed anyway – but the frown that always settles on his face is too heavy for it to bear, all the joy apparently being wrung out of him from their long arse weekend.

“Well, we are here really fucking early.” Michael then draws his blazer around his body to shield him from some cold breeze that Oliver can’t feel. “You’d almost think our brothers dumping us here was of some benefit.”

“I certainly feel the benefit, anything to get Richard off my case.” Oliver shrugs, feeling a chill suddenly beset his limbs and he shivers impulsively, then scoots up to sit on the small handrail that leads up to their door. “Oh, hey, did you watch the footy last night?”

“No, never got the chance to.”

“Me either.” Oliver peers to the ground, which is clear of almost all detritus save for one spent coca cola can.

Michael groans and leans back against the handrail, making it judder slightly under his weight, but just barely. “Maybe we can watch the highlights tonight if we get lucky.”

“Not me, dude, apparently I’m too stupid.”

“You are stupid,” Michael remarks without a hint of hesitation. It might hurt from anyone else, but from him it’s merely routine and Oliver responds as he always does: drawing his hand into a fist and batting it swiftly against his friends skull. It’s a less than impressive blow that barely makes his head tilt sideways.

“Walsh, I’ve told you before about hitting your classmates.” The teacher, an aging man with a bushy moustache and thick rimmed glasses wanders up to them, as he’s always arriving just in time to se Oliver doing something he deems to be awful, without the context that’s so badly required. “It’s too early in the day.”

“Sorry, Mr Hemhaw.” Oliver grins at the man, who frowns back at him, wrinkles cutting into his brow and keys held loosely in his grasp.

“Featherstonehaugh, Walsh, I’ve told you fifteen times already.” He finally unlocks the door and strides inside, the gloom of the small inlet not sufficiently tempting enough to lure either of them into moving.

“I love how he refers to you by surname only.”

“It makes me feel special.” Oliver hops down, landing with a soft thud, his schoolbag giving a loud rattle as his tin pencil case connects with his lunchbox.

“You are special,” Michael mutters under his breath and Oliver responds with a well-aimed thump to Michael’s chest, harder this time, but still a harmless swat compared to the damage he could do if he really wanted to.

“Walsh! I’m not warning you again.” Mr Featherstonehaugh pokes his head out the door, supposedly to see if any of their other classmates – wankers the lot of them – have shown up. He seems disappointed about their absence, or perhaps merely by the continued presence that Oliver displays. “Once more and you’ll have detention during lunch. Again.”

Oliver opens his mouth to argue, but decides against it. Detention certainly isn’t any fun, and if Richard so much as suspects he’s gotten another so early in the year he’ll never stop ranting about it. Some things just aren’t worth the effort.

“Both of you get in here,” Mr Featherstonehaugh says, and then disappears back into the small entrance.

Michael moves after him first, merely to avoid the clash of disobedience, which Oliver seems to do enough of for both of them. Oliver follows, the wooden floor of the outhouse that is their form room creaking under the stress of their heavy school shoes.

The entrance leads to three doors, one of them a brand new computer room, one that they never seem to use – likely due to their low class rating; only the smart ones can use a computer apparently – and another to a small counsellor’s office which is where Oliver met Michael back in first year, the school unclear as to how to deal with their circumstances – as similar as they are – and their unlikely friendship being born from a meeting as Michael had been exiting the room and Oliver waiting outside, dreading every second of it.

And likely only sticking because of Oliver’s dogged determination to have at least one friend, where Michael seemed like he’d have happily gone without. He sometimes seems tempted to do so regardless some days, but their friendship – as it stands anyway – is at least mutually beneficial. Oliver gets the benefit of Michael’s superior brainpower and ability to manoeuvre around problems and Michael can make use of Oliver’s raw brute strength as well as allow him to draw attention away from himself.

The door they wander through leads them to a room that’s little more than a line of wobbly desks, a single broken radiator and some small notice boards that house a meagre selection of history posters that Oliver has read at least a hundred times yet still hasn’t actually picked up any information from.

Though the one about the catapult and guillotine is his favourite, if only because he can understand the violence of them to a degree.

Michael wanders to his desk; the single most isolated one at the back of the room. Oliver has been relocated to the front, apparently so Mr Featherstonehaugh can ‘keep an eye’ on him, but he drifts to the seat in front of Michael’s desk and plops down on it.

“How far did you get in call of duty then?” Oliver enquires, aware that their combined desires for the weekend had involved nothing but ignoring their upcoming decision about GCSE subjects and immersing themselves in mindless loud noises. “I heard it’s pretty good.”

“Never got a chance.” Michael shrugs. “Which is about as much as I expected.”

“You should come to my place sometime, my Playstation Two still works.” Oliver shrugs. Somehow the only place they ever truly meet is in school. The offer is an attempt at being polite at best, as the idea of actually having his friend over, especially with Richard around, horrifies him.

From what he’s heard, the feeling is mutual.

“Can’t,” Michael says, as the sound of more people wandering into the room starts up, the threatening demand for Oliver to move his arse off Owen’s seat only barely responded to. “I’ll talk to you later when we’re in English.”

Oliver stands and nods before striding off, making a firm point to push through his larger, more menacing classmates instead of going around them. Being the shortest kid in school never stops him from trying to prove his dominance, it seems to actively feed it, forcing him to stand up to anybody who might dare cross him.

The warning glance he gets from Mr Featherstonehaugh settles him down as he slides into his seat and the taking of registration begins.

Oliver’s name is always called last.


End file.
